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windowsdetectprintscreen

Is it possible to "trick" PrintScreen, swap out the contents of my form with something else before capture?


I have a bit of a challenge.

In an earlier version of our product, we had an error message window (last resort, unhandled exception) that showed the exception message, type, stack trace + various bits and pieces of information.

This window was printscreen-friendly, in that if the user simply did a printscreen-capture, and emailed us the screenshot, we had almost everything we needed to start diagnosing the problem.

However, the form was deemed too technical and "scary" for normal users, so it was toned down to a more friendly one, still showing the error message, but not the stack trace and some of the more gory details that I'd still like to get. In addition, the form was added the capabilities of emailing us a text file containing everything we had before + lots of other technical details as well, basically everything we need.

However, users still use PrintScreen to capture the contents of the form and email that back to us, which means I now have a less than optimal amount of information to go on.

So I was wondering. Would it be possible for me to pre-render a bitmap the same size as my form, with everything I need on it, detect that PrintScreen was hit and quickly swap out the form contents with my bitmap before capture, and then back again afterwards?

And before you say "just educate the users", yes, that's not going to work. These are not out users, they're users at our customers place, so we really cannot tell them to wisen up all that much.

Or, barring this, is there a way for me to detect PrintScreen, tell Windows to ignore it, and instead react to it, by dumping the aformentioned prerendered bitmap onto the clipboard ready for placing into an email?

The code is C# 3.0 in .NET 3.5, if it matters, but pointers for something to look at/for is good enough.

Our error-reporting window has these capabilities:

  • Show a screenshot that was taken when the error occured (contains all the open windows of the program at the time, before the error dialog was shown)
  • Show a text file containing every gory detail we can think of (but no sensitive stuff)
  • Save the above two files to disk, for latter attaching to an email or whatnot by the user
  • Sending the above two files to us by email, either by opening a new support case, or entering an existing support case number to add more information to it
  • Ignore the problem and hope it goes away (return to app)
  • Exit the application (last resort)

We still get screenshots from some users. Not all, mind you, so my question is basically how I can make the PrintScreen button help us a bit more for those users that still use it.


Solution

  • Wouldn't it be possible to disable the Print Screen button altogether when the error popup is active? Have it display a message along the lines of "Please use the clearly visible button in the middle of your screen to report the error" I agree it breaks expected functionality, but if your users are really that stupid, what can you do...

    Alternatively, have it report errors automatically (or store the data locally, to be fetched later, if you can't send without asking for some reason), without asking the user. If you want to be able to connect print screened screenshots with detailed error data, have it send a unique ID with the data that's also displayed in the corner of the popup.