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How can I take a screenshot of the Windows 10 Login Screen?

I have read How can I take a screenshot of my logon screen in Windows 7?. Unfortunately, the posted answers reportedly only work for either Windows XP or 7.

I've considered using VirtualBox or VMWare as suggested in How can I take screenshots of the PC before it boots up?, but this wont allow me to capture a computer-specific login issue*. The aforementioned question also specifically asked for solutions before the PC boots into Windows.

*The "Shut Down" button disappeared from my desktop's login screen, but that's an issue for a future question.

Windows 10 login screen

Stevoisiak
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6 Answers6

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Add the Snipping Tool as the Ease of Access button to do the job.

Open Registry Editor and navigate to the following location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options

Create a new Key called utilman.exe on the left panel and a new String value called Debugger at the right panel. Then set the path of the snipping tool (see below) as the value of the string.

C:\Windows\System32\SnippingTool.exe

enter image description here

At the Login Screen, Click the Ease of Access button, the one next to the Power button at the bottom right corner of the screen. The snipping tool pops up. Take the screenshot of the Login Screen and click Copy button to copy it to the clipboard. You won’t be able to save the screenshot you just took, but you can still use Clipboard as your middle man to transfer the content.

Log back to your desktop, launch Paint app or any other photo editing or screenshot app you use and paste it.

Source: https://www.nextofwindows.com/windows-10-tip-how-to-take-screenshot-of-lock-screen-and-login-screen

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    Are the accessibility options still accessible, or are they entirely replaced by the snipping tool? – Stevoisiak Jun 08 '17 at 17:24
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    As an alternative that does not change the ease of access button, you could also use the old hack of replacing sethc.exe with a copy of cmd.exe and press shift multiple times on the login screen to have a cmd pop up (as admin. careful not to leave that available!) and start any tool you want from there. Make sure to create a backup of the original sethc.exe to later reverse this hack. – lucidbrot Jun 08 '17 at 19:16
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    @StevenVascellaro it's completely replaced. –  Jun 08 '17 at 19:31
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    I'm surprised that the clipboard survives through the login process. This intuitively seems bad. – spender Jun 09 '17 at 12:53
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    Having used this trick to break into a Windows computer before, I'm a bit surprised Microsoft hasn't "fixed" this yet. – Todd Wilcox Jun 10 '17 at 12:33
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    @ToddWilcox It's not a bug; it falls under one of the immutable laws of security. If you can modify the operating system, you can already do anything. "Fixing" this would be security theatre. – Justine Krejcha Jun 11 '17 at 06:47
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    This trick doesn't work anymore; the clipboards are now different I think. – sean May 25 '19 at 17:38
  • Although it doesn't work with snipping tool, I replaced it with ShareX tool and it was able to take the screenshot at login window. – Pankaj Jaju Jun 20 '20 at 15:24
  • For my system (Win10Pro, 10.0.17763) it did not work with C:\Windows\System32\SnippingTool.exe. However, it worked fine with C:\IrfanViewPortable\IrfanViewPortable.exe and its screenshot function (Options -> Screenshot, IrfanView Version 4.37). – Traveler Jun 29 '20 at 10:15
77

The word "camera" leaps to mind. :-)

If you've got a mobile phone there's a good chance you've a camera in it as well, so that's usually an easy option.

You can easily transfer the photo to whatever you want after that.

There's a tendency with issues like this to only look at solutions within the problem domain - i.e. you're looking at a way to get the computer to take a screenshot, not looking for a way to get a shot of the screen.

I'd be lying if I said I hadn't wasted ages myself trying to get the computer to do something that just grabbing my camera and taking a quick snap shot wouldn't have done way faster. People get tunnel vision on problems and don't look for alternatives.

StephenG - Help Ukraine
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    IN some cases a camera might be the only way; but it almost always should be the option of last resort. Moire effects mean it's going to look awful; and posting a picture of your screen will always trigger a flood of sarcasm suggesting a proper screenshot instead. – Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight Jun 08 '17 at 20:34
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    @Dan-Neely : It's for reporting a bug, not a photography contest. I'm frankly baffled by why people would downvote this. We're not talking about documenting something for production purposes. I've dealt with a lot of bugs in my time and from personal experience, if it take ten seconds to take a shot with a mobile phone and tells me what I need to know, telling a user to open registry and fiddle with keys is practically guaranteeing more trouble than it's worth. KISS is the principle, not Do-It-The-Hard-Way. – StephenG - Help Ukraine Jun 08 '17 at 20:45
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    @yass : Better is relative. If you mean I didn't enable an essentially useful functional extension for a once of minor problem using a complex procedure to solve a simple problem like getting a screen shot to show a problem, then, yes, that's what I did. We old engineers are very practical like that. – StephenG - Help Ukraine Jun 08 '17 at 20:47
  • The Moire is often bad enough to make the screen borderline unreadable; especially if it's a jpeg reduced to a reasonable size. And doing so gives an initial impression of being clueless which is going to color the opinion of anyone looking at your report. (Because "of course" if you knew what you were doing, you'd've taken the screenshot the right way.) – Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight Jun 08 '17 at 20:55
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    The internet is packed with photos of screen shots taken with phones which are good enough for purpose. You're inventing problems to fix before they happen. It takes very little time to get the user to take a photo and attach it to an email. If, and only if, it's still a problem to read it well enough to see the issue, then you can start looking at more solution requiring more effort and time. Try the easy way first, then try the complex way. – StephenG - Help Ukraine Jun 08 '17 at 21:17
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    I can't actually objectively disagree with the points that @StephenG has raised, yet emotionally I still completely agree with Dan, and there's no way I'd consider this approach, or "allow" the users of my bug tracking system to treat it with such disdain! Funny, huh? – Lightness Races in Orbit Jun 08 '17 at 22:28
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    Well that's a philosophical issue. My view is get the info the simplest, quickest way possible and deal with the underlying problem (which is not getting a perfect screenshot), rather than getting a technically elegant solution. To paraphrase someone else : an inelegant solution in the next five minutes can be worth a lot more than an elegant one an hour from now. A strip of duct tape is inelegant, but if it works, why am I reaching for my welding gear ? :-) – StephenG - Help Ukraine Jun 08 '17 at 22:52
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    +1 for offering the simple solution. I'm certainly not going to tell the average user to start messing with system files, and almost everyone has a high-resolution camera in their pockets these days. – Bob Jun 09 '17 at 00:26
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    @DanNeely Moire effects are not an issue at typical phone camera and screen resolutions in the last 5 years (I should know, I've used this approach many times in pre-boot screens where you barely have an OS let alone a screenshot tool). I don't think I've seen many people complain about photos of pre-boot/login screens, and those that do are shut down quite quickly. – Bob Jun 09 '17 at 00:30
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    Some organizations frown upon unauthorized camera use on their property. I know someone who was fired for doing this very thing (under slightly different circumstances.). – Davidw Jun 09 '17 at 05:15
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    @Davidw : Needless to say I'm going to suggest using an authorized camera in this case (or getting permission to use it as an exception). – StephenG - Help Ukraine Jun 09 '17 at 05:18
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    This requires no admin/elevated user rights and doesn't involve messing with the system that's showing the issue (the other answers would be problematic if the "ease of access" menu was the problem). So long as camera aren't banned, it's ideal. – Chris H Jun 09 '17 at 09:26
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    I would really hope that any organization that frowns on unauthorized camera use would have equally furrowed brows when you start editing the Windows registry. Not to mention that if you're actually having a problem at the Logon screen, editing the registry may be really problematic. – Auspex Jun 09 '17 at 14:21
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    This is clearly the correct choice for anything not needing 'publishing-level' image results. For any purpose of documentation, this is faster and more secure than needing to adjust anything registry related. – Grade 'Eh' Bacon Jun 09 '17 at 18:48
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    KISS! I've done this for capturing a BIOS screen shot. Its better than trying to remember the message and write it out by hand real quick. – Criggie Jun 09 '17 at 22:14
  • I once used this technique to outstanding effect to walk a new-to-Linux friend through diagnosing and recovering from a buggy kernel update that introduced a SATA driver issue that prevented his only computer from booting (and involved sending me an average of 12 iPad photos an hour). These were dense errors, on a CRT. Without photography we were unable to get to the platform's equivalent of registry editing. – newcoder Jun 11 '17 at 02:32
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    Great answer. Oh, and remember: if you don't have one of them fancy camera phones, you wouldn't be the frist one to put his monitor in a photocopier... – xDaizu Jun 12 '17 at 10:50
  • @xDaizu Made my day. Reminds me of tales of photocopying floppies. – TripeHound Jun 13 '17 at 07:29
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Alternatively, Lee Whittington made a freeware tool to achieve that:

Ease Of Access Replacer

The freeware replaces the button with the following useful tools:

  1. Logon Screen Screenshot : Take a screenshot of the Logon Screen. Logon Screenshots are saved to C:\Screenshots.

  2. Lock Screen Screenshot : Take a screenshot of the Lock Screen. Lock Screen Screenshots are saved to C:\Screenshots. (Among other tools as well)

It should work on Windows 10 as well (used it)

enter image description here

xavier_fakerat
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Connect to your Windows 10 PC from another computer using remote desktop and then use fast user switching to get to the login prompt so you can grab a screen shot.

twconnell
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You can also use an external video capture box, but this suggestion may be way too expensive and complicated for what you're trying to do.

MountainMan
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Just press the Print button without Ctrl or Alt and paste it (Ctrl + V) in Paint/PhotoShop or any other graphics program.

I tested it on Windows 10 Pro (Version 1703).

Alexander Sidikov Pfeif
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