Baffling logic
A while back a chap sent me this plea for my help:

Click for bigger if you must




So that's a screenshot of MS Paint, inside which is another screenshot. A screenshot of a screenshot. Some people... *shakes head*
( chart cat has an itch, Fri 25 Sep 2009, 5:52, 6 replies)

Surprised he didn't post you a letter with a printout
And emailed you to say he was sending the attachment separately
( LemonEntryMyDearWatson This time, Moriarty, the hand is on the other foot, Fri 25 Sep 2009, 8:59, closed)

Consider yourself lucky that he gave you an error message
'My computer's fucked'

OK. What's going wrong?

'I can't print'

OK. What happens if you go into Printers and Faxes?

'I tried that, but it said something about it not working'

OK. What was the message?

'I dunno I just clicked OK, and tried to print again'

It's actually damn annoying that Vista doesn't support Printscreen any more - You've got to use that stupid 'snipping tool'
( moogthedog, Fri 25 Sep 2009, 9:59, closed)

I'm using Vista, and prtscr still works just as it always has for me...
alt+prtscr for active window still works too

Do you mean Windows 7?
( LemonEntryMyDearWatson This time, Moriarty, the hand is on the other foot, Fri 25 Sep 2009, 10:57, closed)

You're not using one of those MS keyboards are you?
The one with that accursed F-lock key? The one which is off by default on boot?

If so, it's worth noting that f-lock needs to be off to use prtscn.

Apropose to the original poster.

One of my pet hates is the way users send screenshots. Guaranteed, almost every screenshot I've received in my current post has been:

* of the entire screen, not the offending window
* pasted into word and e-mailed as an attachment, rather than as an inline image in the e-mail
* so bloody small that you need to twat around with the zoom functions to make out the goddamn text of the error message

In addition, the fault description will be in the body of the e-mail while the screenshot will be in the word document, so as well as having to fire up a Word I'm having to juggle windows to work out what is going on.

I thought this was just a minor bit of user education, that our mail setup (outhouse/exchange) supports inline images and that the word would get out soon enough. But no, five years on and I'm still receiving ERROR MESSAGE.DOC by e-mail.

On the brighter side, I relieve my tension by venting in the support log (initially as an experiment to prove no-one ever reads it). I'll get some of the choicer ones and post them next week.
(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_ =o.o=, Fri 25 Sep 2009, 14:46, closed)

Is said chap Xzibit?
You know, he put a screenshot in a screenshot so you can troubleshoot while you troubleshoot.
(sarahlicity, Mon 28 Sep 2009, 12:14, closed)

Could they not
have saved it in paint (it has a filename) and then tried to fix the problem themselves? Seeing as they use terminology such as the 'unix box' they don't seem like a total moron.

When they realised that they couldn't fix the problem themselves they opened up the paint file and instead of faffing around with selecting all and copying, just print screening into the email.

This makes perfect sense to me, given that the paint file has been saved and named and the print screen of said file has been copied inline within the email.
(NDayave , Hooray For, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 11:20, closed)