Video Card, Screenshots and Steam

[Althewarlord]

My Computer is an Acer Aspire M3400 and my video card is an ATI Radeon HD 4250, which is the one of the VERY minimum requirement to play Skyrim. I have changed all my preferences in Skyrim but I still am not able to take screenshots like I do for my Oblivion game. I believe that I may have accidentally deleted Steam.

Not sure if it is the video card or the steam but can anyone help me out with this?

[Belthazor]

Skyrim requires Steam to run. So if you can still play Skyrim, Steam is still working.

To take a screenshot, make sure that it says "bAllowScreenshot=1" in your Skyrim.ini under "[Display]". Also, are you sure you're pressing the correct key (F12) for taking a screeenshot?

[Spark]

i... don't know how you can "accidentally deleted steam". You could try pressing printscreen also, though.

[Althewarlord]

I do have that and I also have iScreenshotIndex=2. Is it supposed to be equal to two?

[Dark Spark]

"iScreenshotindex" is merely the counter for what number screenshot you're making next. The fact yours says "2" means you've already made two screenshots (the computer is going to name the next one "Screenshot3")

Screenshots are located in the following folder path: \Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\skyrim\
They are .bmp files named "Screenshot"

[Belthazor]

Hm... I guess my game/installation is completely different then. I don't even have an iScreenshotIndex entry, and my screenshots aren't saved in the Skyrim folder, but somewhere deep within Steam's "userdata" folder. They are also JPG files, not BMPs.

P.S.: Additionally, my screenshots aren't named "ScreenshotX". They are in the form of "year_month_day_xxxxx" with xxxxx starting at 00001 and increasing for each shot on the same day. For example: "2014_08_06_00001.jpg" for the first screenshot that was taken today.

[Dark Spark]

Pressing the 'Print Screen' key gives you a bitmap meant to be stored locally. Pressing F12 creates one meant to be uploaded onto your Steam account.

[Althewarlord]

See that's the thing. I press Print Screen and F12 and the game lags for a second or two however NOTHING is displayed. Nothing at all. In Oblivion it says "Screenshot1.bmp was created" or something similar to that.

No problems at all with Oblivion just Skyrim.

[thegooseking]

It should still say that in Skyrim when you press Print Screen, but not when you press F12.

It's very strange that both Skyrim screenshots and Steam screenshots seem to be disabled, as they work differently as far as I'm aware.

Since, as others have said, you can't play Skyrim without Steam, it's a good bet that you haven't deleted Steam. If you press Shift+Tab in-game, do you get the Steam overlay UI? If that's disabled, you can't take screenshots with F12. To enable it, you need to find your Steam client (by default, it should be at C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe, if you don't have a shortcut to it). Once you've opened it, go to your library and right-click on the Skyrim entry, selecting 'Properties' from the bottom of the menu that pops up. Check the box that says "Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game". That should let you take screenshots with F12, at least, though they'll be managed by your Steam client and a little hard to find without using the client.

I do have that and I also have iScreenshotIndex=2. Is it supposed to be equal to two?

They should be in different files. bAllowScreenshot=1 should be in Skyrim.ini while iScreenshotIndex should be in SkyrimPrefs.ini

[Althewarlord]

I understand, Steam is still there, I just checked it. I'll check for the screenshots there, and I already have bAllowScreenshot=1 but still nothing happens.