When you use the print screen command in Windows, it takes the image of the whole screen. If you want to display only a particular portion of that image, you have to use an image editing tool (like MS Paint) to crop.
In case you wanted to take the image of only the active window, you would have used the Print Screen Command and cropped the image to get the active window.

Or else, just use Alt + Print Screen (prt Scr) to take the image of the active windows alone.

This works in Windows XP and Vista.











Hey, Thanks for sharing this! I never knew that we could capture active windows alone.
Neither did I knew! Thanks a lot for sharing
This will definitely come in handy someday.
I already knew this
but thanks for sharing anyway ! . I was aware that it was working in XP , I was only unaware that it also worked in Vista .
Regards,
CristianR.
Nice tip buddy . Will save me a lot of time .
This is the method i do to capture windows.
great! New Idea here! I won’t working hard with gimp to crop the rest part any more!
Will this tips work with the context menu?
@Ken Xu, Well it wont take the image of context menu as it will disappear as soon as you press ‘alt’
this is very informative…thank you for pointing it out
I haven’t noticed until now that there is a difference for pressing “alt prt src” from just pressing “prt src”… thanks
i didn’t know this. Thanks
Oh cool! Didn’t know this tip at all. Great tip there.
i’ve as yet not understood how 2 print a screen?
can any one tell me in detail???
@ronnie, You just press the keys Print Screen while pressing the key ALT. In case you are using your laptop, you need to press function key (fn) ALT Print Screen all at the same time.