need a method to determine if machine is idle

[kor]

I am having problems with the built in windows XP method of determining if a machine is idle. It seems if background xp cleanup tasks run, or if the processor has more than 10% usage then windows doesn't consider the machine idle.

Has anyone determined a relatively reliable way to check if a machine is idle? Obviously I can check for mouse movement every second or something and if the mouse hasn't moved... but what about full screen videos.

Anyone have any ideas?

[Melba23]

kor,

No need to check yourself for mouse movement. From the Help file: "_Timer_GetIdleTime - Returns the number of ticks since last user activity".

As to fullscreen video, you could increase the required tme period if certain processes, such as Media Player, are running.

M23

[kor]

I'm worried about that idle counter as XP resets various idle timers when it runs cleanup tasks.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310601

Although microsoft says the problem was fixed in SP1 I have SP3 machines that are seeing the exact behavior. I am looking to code something myself that will have it's own timer since I don't trust the XP ones.

Another idea I had was to simply check to see if the screen saver is active, then count 30 minutes.

Is there a way to check to see if a screen saver is currently active?

[kor]

I've searched and searched for a way to determine if the screen saver is running, but I can't find any code that is within the past couple of years. Google shows me autoit code from like 2005, but it doesn't work. has there been anything recently to determine if a screen saver is active on a local machine?

[BrewManNH]

You can check the registry to see what the screensaver is set to, then check the processes running to see if it's running or not.

The key for the screensaver is (on XP), "HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\SCRNSAVE.EXE"

[kor]

Here is my code. My last problem is getting the script to continue running after the machine comes back from sleep. Can i run the script as a service to make it do that? I imagine I need to do some kind of script restart or something.

I also need to figure out a way that if the screensaver process closes within the 30 minute countdown then the script starts over.

ProcessWait("logon.scr")
If ProcessExists("logon.scr") Then
    For $i = 1 to 1800 Step 1
        Sleep(1000)
    Next
    Run("psshutdown.exe -d -t 1", @WindowsDir & "\", @SW_HIDE)
EndIf

EDIT: (updated code)

While 1
    ProcessWait("logon.scr")
    If ProcessExists("logon.scr") Then
        For $i = 1 to 1800 Step 1
            If Not ProcessExists("logon.scr") Then ExitLoop
            Sleep(1000)
        Next
        If $i >= 1800 Then Run("psshutdown.exe -d -t 1", @WindowsDir & "\", @SW_HIDE)
    EndIf
WEnd

Edited May 24, 2011 by kor

[oren]

Here is my code. My last problem is getting the script to continue running after the machine comes back from sleep. Can i run the script as a service to make it do that? I imagine I need to do some kind of script restart or something.

I also need to figure out a way that if the screensaver process closes within the 30 minute countdown then the script starts over.

ProcessWait("logon.scr")
If ProcessExists("logon.scr") Then
    For $i = 1 to 1800 Step 1
        Sleep(1000)
    Next
    Run("psshutdown.exe -d -t 1", @WindowsDir & "\", @SW_HIDE)
EndIf

EDIT: (updated code)

While 1
    ProcessWait("logon.scr")
    If ProcessExists("logon.scr") Then
        For $i = 1 to 1800 Step 1
            If Not ProcessExists("logon.scr") Then ExitLoop
            Sleep(1000)
        Next
        If $i >= 1800 Then Run("psshutdown.exe -d -t 1", @WindowsDir & "\", @SW_HIDE)
    EndIf
WEnd

what does -d -t 1 does in the run??

thanks

[kor]

-d : suspend

-t 1 : time = 1 second