Tip: Getting screenshots of login window

Sean McNamara found that he could use Command-Shift-3 to take a screenshot of the login window. But after he logged in, the picture was nowhere to be found. This is not really too surprising. The OS has no way of knowing which account is yours before you log in, so it does not know where to put the picture. Thus, it places it on the desktop of the root account. If you log in as a root user, you will find the file (named "Picture 1" or "Picture 1.tiff") waiting for you. By the way, the location of the root desktop folder is: /private/var/root/Desktop. Thus, you can also access these files by starting up in OS 9 and dragging the files out of this folder.

Update: Sean adds: "Unless you've tinkered with the visibility of the /private folder, you won't see it when booted from OS 9. But the Sherlock app running under Classic will find items in it - it won't do anything with them, but you'll be able to locate items that way. Secondly, you don't need to login as root to get at the files. Admin users can use the Finder's Go to Folder command to go straight to /private/var/root/Desktop to access the files."