"On Microsoft Windows, pressing the Print Screen key captures a screenshot of the entire desktop area, and places it in the clipboard. Pressing the combination of Alt-Print Screen captures only the current active window. In most versions of Windows, captured screenshots do not include the mouse pointer. Video content in programs using a hardware overlay video renderer is not captured by the method described above.[citation needed] Windows Media Player on Windows XP in its default configuration on supported hardware is affected by this. However, some third-party applications can capture overlay images. By default, Windows does not save the screenshot to an image file; the user is required to paste the image into a separate imaging program (such as Microsoft Paint, which is built-in) for saving. Some programs, however, particularly multiplayer online games, will automatically save screenshots in a specified folder. As of Windows XP (or any version based on Windows NT), it is no longer possible to take screenshots of full-screen DOS windows without other software. Windows Vista and Windows 7 include a utility called Snipping Tool, first introduced in Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. It is a screen-capture tool, that allows for taking screenshots (called snips) of windows, rectangular areas, or a free-form area. Snips can then be annotated, saved as an image file or as an HTML page, or emailed. Unfortunately, it does not work with non-tablet XP versions but represents an XP compatible equivalent. For programmatic access, application developers can use GDI, DirectX or the Windows Media Encoder API to capture the screen." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenshot#Microsoft_Windows