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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

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Also related: superuser.com/questions/382872/… – Nathan Osman yesterday
    
Can you run it as a VM? – jpmc26 yesterday
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For some people the easiest way is to use something like this Although I understand that it's not for everybody. – Andrew Savinykh 13 hours ago
    
Really? I would have thought print screen button would do this? Perhaps there's no access to the clipboard at that level – Kolob Canyon 3 hours ago
up vote 67 down vote accepted

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? – Steven Vascellaro yesterday
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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 yesterday
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@StevenVascellaro it's completely replaced. – Cown yesterday
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I'm surprised that the clipboard survives through the login process. This intuitively seems bad. – spender 23 hours ago
up vote 32 down vote

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.

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You did not provide a better solution than other answer – yass yesterday
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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 yesterday
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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 yesterday
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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 yesterday
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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 yesterday
up vote 12 down vote

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

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up vote 2 down vote

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.

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