I've just noticed that you cannot take screen shots in windows media player, When I try it takes the screen shot fine all the buttons play, stop etc are there my desktop is visible in the background (im running it in a window) but the actual movie just appears as a blank screen , does anyone know why this is?

I'm not sure exactly why this happens but I know that the video never gets on the picture. What I use for situations like this is a program called Snagit which will pretty much capture a screenshot of any area, or your full screen. You can check it out here and download a free trial.

thanks a lot I'll check it out.