I have a Packard Bell, model C110 system. The keyboard "Print Screen" does not function. I see nothing in the paperwork about this function. Is this a defect or is this normal? Either way, how can I print the screen?

That key on the extreme upper right of PC keyboards is a relic of the long dead days of DOS and no longer automatically prints the contents of the screen.

But it does, in fact, let you snap a picture of what's on the screen and save the image in the computer's short-term memory (called the clipboard).

You then have several options to make a hard copy. Fastest is to call up the clipboard viewer program built into Windows and use the print command. You also can call up just about any graphics program you might have (including the built-in Windows Paint program) and select "Edit/Paste" to create a picture file of your screen.

A final note: If you want to snap just the contents of an isolated window rather than the whole screen, hold down Alt and press Print Screen.

Pub Date: 10/19/98