I just discovered this and think it’s really useful…

I’m in the process of documenting a client’s server configuration, using a virtual machine with a VPN connection to the client’s network and then a remote desktop protocol (RDP) connection to their servers. Because the VPN is within a virtual machine, I’m constrained by the limitations of the Microsoft virtual machine remote control (VMRC) client and thought I could only take full screen screenshots, using VMRC’s Remote Control | Special Keys | Send Print Screen menu commands. What I found (completely by accident) is that if I use the mouse to send the print screen command, the whole screen is captured; however, if I use the keyboard (Alt+R | right cursor | down cursor | carriage return) it acts like an Alt+PrtSc, and only the contents of the active window are copied to the clipboard.

I’m not sure if this is true for all clients (I haven’t tested further), but my setup was:

• Windows Server 2003 SP1 host.
• Virtual Server 2005 (v1.1.465.0 SE).
• Windows XP SP2 guest (with virtual machine additions 13.206 installed), VPNed into the client’s network using the Cisco Systems VPN client (v4.6.02.0011) and then RDPed into a Windows 2000 SP4 server (RDP client v5.1.2600.2180).