After upgrading my iMac to OS X Lion (10.7) everything works (or at least seems to work), until I tried to do a screen capture with the built-in tools.
Things that worked:
- Capturing the entire desktop to file
- Capturing a selection (using the cross-hair) to file
- Capturing the entire desktop to the clipboard
- Capturing a selection (using the cross-hair) to the clipboard
Things that didn't work:
- Capturing entire windows to file or the clipboard (SHIFT-COMMAND-4 + SPACE / SHIFT-COMMAND-3 + SPACE)
All I got was a weird notification box with the message:
Screen capture can't be saved
The console application also showed an error message:
12/16/11 1:40:08.762 com.apple.SystemUIServer.agent: screencapture could not capture window 3c
Lurking around the Interwebs, I found this seem to occur after an upgrade of the OS, but real solutions are hard to come by.
This is what I did to solve my problem:
- Remove the screencapture PLIST (preferences) file (~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.screencapture.plist)
- Copy a com.apple.screencapture.plist file from a working OS X Lion environment and place it in the correct location on the troubled OS X installation.
That seemed to result in two com.apple.screencapture.plist files (one with an additional extension of .locked). I removed the .locked file, rebooted the iMac, and screen capture worked again.
I must mention that I didn't see the .locked file initially. Could be that it existed before. In which case I probably did more than was required to get things fixed....