Print screen issue in a pc without moniter [Windows platform]

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Hi All,
I want to extract some data from a flash website by OCR[Optical Character Recognition] programmatically.By taking Internet explorer handle and navigating to a
page and taking screenshot of it.Everything went fine until I scheduled it in a server that have no monitor.

Any Idea how to take a screenshot without monitor?[is there anything like "virtual monitor" which can store the view of monitor and OS will also think it as monitor and send all the data]?

Posted 8-Jul-12 18:33pm

shankha2010

Updated 9-Jul-12 0:48am

TorstenH.

v3

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Jochen Arndt · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-08T23:01:00

Solution 1

You may connect a 'DVI Dummy' (Google for it) that simulates a monitor to be attached to the graphics card.

For a VGA port see this VGA Dummy[^] solution.

You may also try ZoneScreen which is designed to extend desktops over network connections. It contains a virtual graphics card with monitor driver. May be it can be used to solve your problem.

Posted 8-Jul-12 23:01pm

Jochen Arndt

Comments

shankha2010 10-Jul-12 1:41am

Thanks a lot for the reply.
It seems to be a Hardware solution by sorting some port with resistance.
My question is
With this arrangement will the Print Screen work?
Please send me if you have any reference link about "how OS send data to monitor? or where the data stores?"

I found a memory location where If I keep some character its becoming visible in Turbo C[C++ in Dos mode]
which seems to be similar as memory mapped IO.

But I don't have any idea about how Windows Display works.

Thanks in advance.

Jochen Arndt 10-Jul-12 3:13am

Print Screen should work.

The OS does not send data to the monitor. They are send to the graphics card. The OS only configures the graphics card for the resolution to be used with the attached monitor. If there is no monitor, the graphics card will report this to the OS. So you must fake one. When using a VGA dummy, connect a VGA monitor and set the resolution before attaching the dummy.

You can't compare DOS video modes with Windows modes. Windows provides functions to get content from screen as bitmap. Have a look for screenshot utilities with C++ source.