Task to wake from Screensaver

Hello all,

I find this forum very useful, yet I couldn't find any reference to what I would like to do on my machine (maybe I'm the first with this question?). Anyway, I have an automouse program that I would like to automatically run at a certain time every day using the Windows Task Scheduler. That's done, and it's easy. HOwever, I have a screensaver on my PC (password protected none the less), that would prohibit this automouse program from functioning properly (it would not see the icons on the desktop that I need the automouse program to "click ").

So, I'm trying to find a way to "wake" or "Stop" my screensaver. Maybe there's something simple I'm not thinking of, but it would have to be fairly complicated I would think. Since my screensaver is password protected (and I'd like to keep it that way), I need the automation routine to not only "wake" from the screensaver, but also somehow input the correct password.

I have looked at the task scheduler in Win 2K and of course there's an option to "Wake the computer..." to run whatever task you're specifying. However, this only works to "wake" the computer from something like Standby Mode, not a screensaver (at least it didn't work for me). I need to actually somehow STOP the screensaver, and see the desktop again for my automouse routine to work.

In reviewing some of the messages on the forum, I would think this would also be a helpful routine for someone that wanted to set their computer to auto defrag at some given time. Since defragging doesn't work well when a screensaver goes active, if you could somehow HAULT your active screensaver, then defrag the disk, it would be much more efficient.

Perhaps someone out knows of a way to do this? I'm stumped, and I've been searching the Net for 2 days now.

Thanks in advance for anyone who can offer some advice!

 

Interesting problem. All the approaches I could think of ran into a stone wall.

After some serious searching, I think you might find a solution in This article you could make do the job for you.

 

Hmmm, closer

Thanks for the reply there. I checked out that article, and I think it's a step in the right direction. However, you still can't fully automate turning the screensaver off. That is, once the screensaver is running, the batch file to make the screensaver inactive WILL fire up through a scheduled task, but the screensaver itself does not turn off.

In case you want to see, here's the batch file I created using reference from that article:

cls

C:\WINNT\regedit.exe /s "C:\Documents and Settings\bmihalic\My Documents\SaverOff.reg "
exit

It fires up the regedit change very nicely, and if you go into the reg editor, you DO in fact see that the value for ScreenSaveActive is set to 0 (off). However, if the screensaver is presently active, the screensaver doesn't actually go away. It's just set for the next time.

If you could just somehow "shake" the mouse or physically press a key on the keyboard, the screensaver would go away (well, I'd still have to type in a password, but it would be the first step). Of course that wouldn't be very automated.

I'll keep checking too. Seems there has to be something out there that might be able to address this. Anyone else have some ideas perhaps?

Thanks for all the effort!!

 

Simulate a keystroke programatically.

Should do the trick since any keypress turns off the screensaver so using the code to send a SHIFT or ENTER ought to do it for you. You can use code to simulate mouse movement I think but it's lots harder.

 

Hey...

Now that IS something. I'm going to check it out then. I didn't know you could programmatically simulate a keystroke event. It looks like something my automouse program would do (but doesn't since it can't see the desktop).

I think I can use the code described there with some more to actually input my password.

I'll let you know how it works.

Thanks!!!

 

Please do post back with your results.

This was an interesting problem and I had fun tracking down stuff that might help you do something that should have been simple but absolutely was not.