A lot of people ask me about how to OSX print screen (i.e take a screen grab in OS X) and also how to take a print screen in Windows XP/Vista. I know this has been covered before but I thought I would put up a little post up….

OS X Print Screen

In OSX you press [and hold] the apple command key, hold shift and then press either 3 or 4 (what does the command key look like?… click here). Here are the most commonly used options:

Capture Entire Screen: Command + Shift + 3

Capture Selected Area: Command + Shift + 4;  then click [hold] and drag a box around the area you wish to capture. Once you release the mouse button the image will be captured.

Using the above key combinations will cause OSX to take a screen grab and then store the file to your desktop. The first screen shot will be called Picture 1, and then further screen shots will be named Picture 2, Picture 3 and so on.

Windows Print Screen

Windows print screen copies the captured screen to the clipboard. Once you’ve done this the image can be pasted into a document using your application of choice (e.g Word/Wordpad etc.) by selecting >edit >paste from the toolbar or by pressing ‘Ctrl’ + ‘V’. There are two types of screen capture:

Capture Entire Screen: To take a screen capture of the entire screen in Windows 9x/XP/Vista simply press the ‘PrintScrn’ button. This takes a screen grab and stores it to the clipboard.

Capture Current Window: To take a screenshot of the current window (not the whole screen) in Windows 9X/XP/Vista hold down ‘Alt’ and Press ‘PrintScrn’.

It amazes me how bad some online shops still are. I’m sorry to start out on a negative note, but there are still a large number of resellers out there that don’t see the link between how their website looks and feels, and how many products they sell. Whats the the point in getting 5000 hits if 4998 of them are wasted because users don’t trust you? When I visit a web shop I immediately form an impression of the company based on their website. It helps me decide whether I think it’s safe to order a product from them or not. When I visit a site that looks like it’s been whipped up in FrontPage I lose confidence and immediately move on (this is measured as your site’s ‘bounce’ rate). Maybe it’s unfair but it’s a bit like eating out, if the restaurant looks rough and ready from the outside, I’m going to try the Italian down the road.

To highlight my point I’ve decided to go a bit old skool; I’ve been looking for a ‘real’ chess set (that doesn’t beep or flash) for the coffee table so I thought I’d try and buy one online.

As luck would have it chess resellers are a brilliant example (I’m sorry chaps). You know when you are trying to find something and all you keep getting are sites that look like they’ve been put together by an Eastern European gang just to steal your credit card details? Welcome to the world of online chess shops. That was until I [finally] found a chess shop that seems to have bothered with good web design; Regency Chess based in Bath. A shining example to behold perhaps?…..well yes, pretty much actually. They look like they’ve put a lot of effort into their site, they were quick when it came to delivery and they were really friendly when I spoke to them on the phone. When I’m impulse buying, I want (no need!) whatever it is I’ve ordered…yesterday.

I ordered a chess set from them at 11am on Thursday and….. alleluia…. it arrived at 10:15 the next morning. I’m no chess geek but the set they sent me looks really nice. It’s a 14” folding chess set with weighted pieces, the board is made from a chunky hardwood (I think it is Sheesham Wood) and it actually feels like it’s worth the £90 I paid for it. Yes, I could have bought something cheaper but some chess sets can cost hundreds, even thousands, and this feels like a good balance. It could easily pass for something twice as expensive. I got emails to tell me my order had shipped, communication was great and everything was properly packed.

I don’t often recommend or plug websites, not that many impress me, but I have to say I had such a good experience I felt compelled to use them as an example of a how specialist web stores should be. Take a look at their site, and then perform a search on google and look at some of their competitors sites. You’ll see what I mean. They’ve obviously spent a lot of time developing their site, making it easy to use without spending an absolute fortune.

Anyway that’s my geekout for today, Staunton Chess sets equal Regency Chess. Search Engine Optimisation PLUS good design equals better sales.

I recently had a problem with a computer located over 300 miles away, it had a nasty malware infection and I didn’t fancy a 6 hour drive. Very often, it’s easier to blow-away a computer and reinstall the operating system rather than spending days scanning and cleaning trojans, viruses and spyware, but sometimes that’s not the easy option.

I started to think about the possibility of cleaning the machine remotely, but I’d need control over the computer whilst it was in safe mode.… well it would have to be safe mode with networking, at least. I often use VNC for remote control (its open source), but as far as I knew I couldn’t get it to run in safe mode with networking….or could I?

This is a guide to using VNC in safe mode (safe mode with networking). Tested with ultraVNC (www.uvnc.com) on Windows, haven’t tested with realVNC: -

1.    Get ultraVNC installed on the target computer. Make sure that you are able to access it; it needs to be installed as a service. You can talk someone through this over the phone. Yes, you may need port forwarding configured at the target site; but if it’s part of a WAN you won’t necessarily have to do this. VNC uses port 5900. Check VNC is working properly.

2.    Download Bootsafe; This is a utility that will allow you to restart the machine in Safe Mode , and Safe Mode with Networking (which is what you need to use). Remember if you restart the computer you won’t be able to hit F8 remotely! that’s why you need to use bootsafe and it needs to be on the target computer.

3.    Open the command prompt on the target machine (Start, Run, ‘cmd’)  and enter the following:

REG COPY HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\winvnc HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Network\winvnc /s /f

This adds a registry key that allows VNC to start and work in safe mode with networking.

4.    Run Bootsafe on the target computer; select ‘Safe Mode – Networking’, click on ‘Reboot’.

If all goes to plan then you should be able to connect to the machine after it reboots in safe mode with networking. Use ‘ping –t’ ; you can see when the machine reboots and when it comes back to life. VNC Safe Mode !

Yes, there are other ways that you can achieve remote control in safe mode, but this did what I needed it to do. There are paid tools like logmein and you can also try VNCscan (I couldn’t get it to work). I’ve since cleaned a couple of machines using the VNC Safe Mode method and it has been surprisingly effective. If you’ve got malware problems try ComboFix combined with malwarebytes.

Standard warning: Step 3 adds a registry key to windows. Editing the registry could damage your computer. Do not edit the Windows registry unless you are confident about doing so.