Anybody managed to automate the register windows dialog?

[joew]

Hello,

I am trying to automate the windows registration dialog (without registering, there's no way to get updates, right?)

I seems as if M$ has built in some extra hurdles for this:

- There's no "visible text", so there's no way to find out the current state of the dialog.

- There are extra delays (dimming of the text), so you can't simply send keystrokes as soon as the window becomes active. The keystrokes would simply go to nirvana.

- None of the controls have ID's, so you are limited to sending keystrokes to the active window, which is error prone (e.g. when arbitrary windows pop up for arbitrary reasons).

- There's no way to find out when the activation is done, so the user has to click on the last "OK" button.

This is the closest I could get so far (german version):

Run ("c:\windows\system32\oobe\msoobe.exe /A")
WinWaitActive ("Windows aktivieren", "")

; Wait for the controls to get "faded in"
Sleep (3000)

; "Yes, activate"
Send ("!J")

; "Next"
Send ("!W")

; Wait again for fading
Sleep (2000)

; "Not register, only activate"
Send ("!N")

; "Next"
Send ("!W")

; Wait until user closes window by clicking away last "OK" button.
while WinExists ("Windows aktivieren", "")
    sleep (100)
WEnd

Any hints/suggestions/ideas?

[rudi]

Hallöchen

Hello,

I am trying to automate the windows registration dialog (without registering, there's no way to get updates, right?)

I seems as if M$ has built in some extra hurdles for this:

- There's no "visible text", so there's no way to find out the current state of the dialog.

- There are extra delays (dimming of the text), so you can't simply send keystrokes as soon as the window becomes active. The keystrokes would simply go to nirvana.

- None of the controls have ID's, so you are limited to sending keystrokes to the active window, which is error prone (e.g. when arbitrary windows pop up for arbitrary reasons).

- There's no way to find out when the activation is done, so the user has to click on the last "OK" button.

1st of all I'd never address the windows dir with it's absolute path: Use the macro @WindowsDir instead...

2nd use the autoit info tool to check what it can "see" inside the activation window. If nothing is presented there, use windows relative mouse coordinates to do a simple mouse click.

Schönen Gruß, Rudi.

Edited March 20, 2008 by rudi

[joew]

1st of all I'd never address the windows dir with it's absolute path: Use the macro @WindowsDir instead...

Thanks for the hint, I'll change that.

2nd use the autoit info tool to check what it can "see" inside the activation window. If nothing is presented there, use windows relative mouse coordinates to do a simple mouse click.

That is exactly the problem: the info tool shows me nothing usable. Looks like M$ has managed to hide everything. There even seems to be no way to find out _when_ to send the clicks/keystrokes.

[weaponx]

I have never had to register to get updates, do you mean activation?

Edited March 20, 2008 by weaponx

[joew]

I have never had to register to get updates, do you mean activation?

Yes, you're right. I'm talking about activation. Sorry for the confusion!