I have this situation. I have a custom screensaver that starts another process using System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("MyHelperApp.exe"). That second process lives on after the screensaver itself is closed and disposed.
The problem is that the screensaver only gets displayed once. Unless I do one of two things:
Go to Task Manager and kill "MyHelperApp.exe". This will allow the screensaver to run one more time, then I have to repeat this step.
Comment out System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("MyHelperApp.exe"). Now the screensaver runs normally, as you would expect.
If I test the screensaver by right-clicking and selecting 'Test', I do not get these problems. I can test it as many times as I want. It is only when Windows manages the installed screensaver that I see this problem.
It is not a blocking problem, because I have screensaver write to a file before getting to System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("MyHelperApp.exe"), and the file never gets written, so the screensaver is not called a second time.
Windows 7 desktop.
Related
I created a VS vb.net program that uses the windows media player. The program works great. However when I create a desktop shortcut to the Release/bin folder, some or the videos have issues (don't start right away, blurred for a few seconds, etc). If I go to the folder and run the .exe, it works. If I make a dos.bat file (cd & exec), it works. If I run the shortcut as administrator, it works.
I rather no run as admin, especially not knowing why. I'm not sure why a shortcut is different than a manual run or running from a dos prompt.
Update: It appears that it has nothing to do with the shortcut! I have the shortcut on screen #2, so that is where the program starts. If I drag the window to screen #1 or start it there, Then the program works OK!
When I ran as administrator or dos batch, the program starts on screen #1 regardless of where the shortcut is.
So it appears that the real problem is: It will only run properly on screen #1. Other screens have the display issues. I have (4) screens. 1 & 2 are one model and 3 & 4 are another and smaller.
i think it depends on where your shortcut is located.
for instance, some people make their profile on a network share (effectively your desktop is a network location), so a shortcut on desktop is actually a link to on a network location which normally has permission restrictions.
another case is that the shortcut you created might not have the "Start in" set to the desired place (your bin/debug folder).
so i think it's worth to examine both of above...
TL;DR Can I make a VB.net form visible on the Windows lock screen [i.e. when a user hits WIN+L]?
I wrote an alert system that notifies staff of a 'lockdown' in vb.net. This has been tested in drills a few times but today it was noted that the 'alert window' does not appear when the screen is locked.
The alert window does make an alarm sound, which can still be heard even when the computer is locked but this is dependant on the machine having speakers that are turned on...
The workstations are running Windows 7.
Edit
I am not looking to spawn a separate process, just get the 'lockdown.vb' form showing on top of the windows lock screen.
Googling this has just given me a load of tutorials on making a lockscreen...which is not what I'm after, hence the question. :-)
I have a screensaver written in C# which takes a screenshot of the Desktop and displays it as the, guess what, screensaver.
This works pretty well except in Windows 8 where the screensaver launches in, what looks like, a separate Desktop with a solid background and thus i am only taking a screenshot of this solid background instead of the actual desktop.
This only counts if the screensaver is launched by the timeout by windows itself, not if you execute the screensaver directly (by double-clicking the *.scr) nor in the preview-panel (/p switch) or if you preview it using the "Test" button (which imho invokes the /s Switch).
According to a Moderator at Microsoft-Answer and so far the only information i found regarding this:
"A design change was made in Windows 8 that prevents screensavers from drawing over an image of the desktop." - Source: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-desktop/bubbles-screensaver-has-black-background/e0807324-5ca6-4abe-b6ba-716848b41ff5
tl;dr: I'm looking for a way to take a screenshot of the actual desktop through a screensaver in Windows 8.
Thanks in advanced.
I can't get WinPhone 7 SDK update v7.1.1 to install. It freezes my computer everytime I try to install, the mouse still work but after a while whole system locked up and I need to hold power button to turn it off. Looked at task manager and look like it freeze when configure the emulator. Tried several time, even reinstall Windows and still no luck. Anyone know a work around on this? I saw some others faced this problem but no solution.
When it freezes (in particular, when the spinning icon freezes), try hitting Ctrl+Alt+Del once. Two things can happen:
The first is that the machine will completely freeze within a minute or two, which will require a hard reboot.
The second is that the screen will flicker quickly, attempting to show the "Lock/Switch user/Sign out/Change password/Task manager" screen, and then will jump back to the setup screen. You'll then see the progress icon start spinning again, but it will hesitate several more times. It will either freeze the machine again (and if so, do a hard reboot and try again), or setup will eventually complete (which on my machine took no longer than 10 minutes).
I have a python script that is running in the background with pythonw. If I close my laptop, it goes into sleep mode. and when I open my laptop, my program has little functionality and freezes after a couple of seconds. Is there any way that my script can tell if my computer is going into sleep mode, so that it can lie dormant and restart when I re-open my laptop?
You can catch WM_POWERBROADCAST window message with PBT_APMQUERYSUSPEND event inside it. To catch this message inside Python program, you can create new invisible window and make separate thread repeatedly calling GetMessage().
In the worst case you can archieve all these by using ctypes only, but you can also use pywin32, sometimes referred to as win32py.