I set up event handlers and handlers within the registry to do a specific task I wanted. Then I set up the USB Autoplay settings to behave that way every time a device is inserted. I tried other USB storage devices and only the original one is behaving how I wanted, everything else has its own settings it seems and ignores the autoplay settings. How can I set up AutoPlay settings that behave for all inserted flash drives or is that not possible on Windows XP?
My experience, has been with XP Pro. (it may extend to other OS's, but I'm not sure)
I have come to realize, that when you go to the "properties" of each hard disk, the only way to set the autoplay to the way you want it (and make XP actually SAVE your settings), is to do each category of files individually (one-at-a-time), saying OK for each (then opening autoplay up again and going to the next category.
It's a real pain, when there are 6 things to set, but this seems to be the only way XP will "LOCK IN" the settings - it doesn't seen to want to work, if you change them all for each disk, THEN say OK.
If you don't have the home version of Windows XP I believe you can use "gpedit.msc" (Group Policy Editor) to tweak your Autorun settings across the board.
EDIT I did a little bit of digging and this blog post (http://www.lostintechnology.com/windows/how-to-change-autorun-settings-in-windows) should point you in the right direction.
Related
Requirements:
Our application replaces the usual windows shell (explorer.exe). This is a product requirement for a closed system that we're supplying.
We oughtta let the user select a wi-fi network and connect to it.
The problem: The wi-fi networks dialog only shows up when explorer.exe is running
What we tried:
Write our own wi-fi manager that uses wlan API. It lists connectible networks and allows the user to connect/disconnect. Problem: too many network types/configuratons that have to be tested, especially when the wheel has already been invented and reinvented all over.
Try and check how is the networks dialog implemented. It appears that it's and undocumented COM interface (IUIRAdioManager). Problem: it's undocumented, so no API
Use an existing network manager, for instance the one that comes with the driver. Problems: it's ugly, not to the product's taste; and it opens too many options for the user, like creating and loading profiles, browsing for files on a file system - these things are unacceptable.
Running explorer.exe just for the purpose of showing the networks dialog and then killing it. Problem: once we run explorer.exe - it pops up metro view and hides our fullscreen application or shows the taskbar.
The latter seems like the preferred solution: no need to reinvent the wheel, it does what's needed. Just gotta make explorer.exe not pop out, keep it quiet in the background.
So, we're down to two options:
How to show the networks flyout dialog without explorer.exe?
How to run explorer.exe without it popping out metro or taskbar above our application?
Your first solution would be incredibly difficult to implement. I am almost certain that the Networks window is dependent on explorer.
However, your second is entirely possible.
To hide the taskbar, you will need to find a window (using FindWindowEx) to find the taskbar (name is Shell_traywnd). This will hide the taskbar and start button. EDIT: Unless you are implementing your own taskbar, you might want to set the taskbar to autohide.
Next you will need to hide all of the metro programs. In a similar fashion as above, find the class named EdgeUiInputWndClass and close it. You should be able to get the process name of it and then kill the process.
Windows key. This is a little more difficult. You will probably need to use a program and delete the key or a keyboard hook (a low level keyboard hook) and just ignore key presses with the same scancode as the windows key. Left Windows is 0x5b and Right is 0x5c (source). Note that this will not block Ctrl+Alt+Del.
Finally, to show the Flyout, you can run %windir%\explorer.exe shell:::{38A98528-6CBF-4CA9-8DC0-B1E1D10F7B1B}
(source).
EDIT2:
You should also be able to hide toast notifications via this
Of course, I don't see why you cannot just use Windows 8/8.1 and put the app in kiosk mode.
I have written a program for work that kills windows explorer (effectively hides desktop icons, taskbar and start menu) so no users can access the internet from our machines, this works well as most machines are touch screen so no keys can be pressed and no access to OSK, but to go a step further I am needing to disable the CTRL key when explorer is not running (Killed in my program) then enable it when they are back (Active in my program).
I've searched Google and seen a lot of ideas but none seems to work, i've got a timer that kills task manager if it starts up, the reason i need to stop CTRL is incase a keyboard is present on the machine i need to stop any shortcuts from being activated and they mostly seem to use the CTRL key.
I know they might be other short cuts but the guys who use my machines aren't the brightest bunch of people in the world but they might be one that 'is reight good ont tinternet'.
Cheers for any advice
Mark
You should look into Kiosk mode.
Here is an example of enabling it in Windows 8.1:
Enable Kiosk Mode in Windows 8.1
If you are still using Windows 7, there are workarounds, like this one:
Creating a Kiosk Machine with Windows 7 and Two Free Applications
I have a dev box with Windows 8 + VS2012 Update 2 on top. Ever since I had this system, the XAML designer has been behaving weird (for Win8 and WPF as well): it redraws only every second time.
Meaning that if I place a control, it does not update (the control cannot be seen, but its outline can be, if I hover over it); but if I place another control, or change the zoom level, or do any other action, then it refreshes. When I do a third action, no update; when I do a fourth action, it redraws. And so on, it is 100% repro-able.
Pretty bad for productivity.
I have the latest drivers and updates, I have loads of RAM (16GB) and a discrete Nvidia video card, I restarted umpteen times, the usual fixes do nothing.
A screenshot: http://sdrv.ms/13BJSof
Anyone with similar experience?
OK, I found a solution - my laptop uses nVidia Optimus (it's a Lenovo W520) and that was the source of this error (amongst others, such as being unable to properly "duplicate" my display to a projector). I solved it by simply turning off Optimus in the BIOS and enabling only the Discrete card.
Here's a though question:
I need to find out when the user double-clicked the OS X desktop, but not icons on it.
Now, I have thought of the following solutions, though I am not sure if they are doable:
Using desktop icons position (not sure how to get them), and the size of the desktop icons, we could theoretically check once the user double-clicks on the desktop, if it is inside one of the icon areas. Contra: Might not be flawless as some icons might be transparent or not taking up the entire icon size.
Maybe there is a variable that tells us if a icon from the desktop has been clicked? Then we could just check if that variable has been activated when the user double-clicked the last time the desk.
I am certainly still open to other (better) solutions, but they need to be sandboxable for the Mac App Store.
This is probably not going to be appropriate for the Mac App Store, for a number of reasons.
First, how are you going to intercept clicks outside your window? There are a few different mechanisms for this (e.g., event taps), but none of them are allowed in sandboxed apps. And that's intentional, and for a good reason—you're not supposed to be interfering with other apps or with the OS.
On top of that, it's hard to imagine that whatever you're trying to do wouldn't count as non-standard UI/HIG stuff, which is another reason for rejection.
But, assuming none of that were a problem, and you could intercept clicks on the desktop, there's no documented way to get all the icons on the desktop, so you have to read the .DS_store file directly, which means relying on private implementation information, which is another thing you're not allowed to do.
Finally, you have to get access to that .DS_store file. Unless you're expecting the user to drag the (invisible) file or its parent directory to your app or select it in an NSOpenPanel or something, the only way to get such access from inside the sandbox is via a temporary exception entitlement. Which you can't use unless you can justify to the reviewer why you need it as a workaround for a bug or limitation in the OS. So, what's your justification going to be?
I have a virtual machine (VMware) with Mercury Quick Test Professional 9.2 installed. I have a script to test an application, written in VB.NET using the Infragistics library.
If I access this virtual machine using my laptop (using Remote Desktop), everything works fine, the script completes without a problem. My laptop runs XP, with Windows Classic theme.
If I access this virtual machine using another machine (using Remote Desktop), the script starts fine, but stops halfway through, without no error message from QTP, nothing. This machine runs XP, with Windows Classic theme.
One difference between the two setups is the size of the screen, the laptop is 1920x1280, other machine 1280x1024.
The step where the script stops involves checking a checkbox within an UltraWinGrid. The checkbox itself is displayed, is on the screen in both cases.
Has anyone had this problem before, or have any idea why the behaviour is different between the two machines?
Thanks.
OK. I've found the problem. In fact, the script was failing silently because that's what the person who wrote the script told it to do. It couldn't validate something which was off screen, so the script failed.
The problem was the QTP definition of 'off screen'. I have two screens attached to my laptop, the screen for the laptop itself (1920x1200) and another screen (1280x1024). I connect to the VM for QTP using remote desktop, and it uses the settings of the screen for the laptop. This means that when I launch my QTP script, and move it to the other screen, it doesn't fit, so the screen is no longer maximized, and the object is partially off screen, so can't be found.
The fix is simple: in the Remote Desktop, use the Display tab, and set the size of the screen to a size to 1280x1024, and QTP doesn't have any more problems.
Voilà.
If you are not using Expert Mode, and / or are allowing QTP to do most of the work to create your repository objects, then yes it is referencing everything by pixels.
I create all of my repository objects by hand, viewing the source (in the case of automated web-application testing) and using the Object Spy for assistance where needed. I make a point to not have any positioning information as part of my object definition, for the very reason you are running in to.
For the parts of my web-app that interacted with Windows (opening a file to upload, etc.) the Object Spy was essential for the trial and error necessary to create a unique identifier for creating the repository object. But it can be done.
Ex1: File Browse Dialog
text = "Choose file"
nativeclass = #32770 (apparently some Windows VooDoo for a file open dialog?)
Ex2: Filename textbox in Browse dialog:
nativeclass = "Edit"
attached text "File &name:" (more Windows VooDoo? It woudn't work for me without the "&")
Ex3: Open Button in the dialog:
text = "&Open"
object class = "Button"
Good Luck!
Point of clarification: You mentioned that QTP stops with no error message. Does that also mean that the test results log file also has no error message? If the log has any information, that may be helpful in diagnosing the problem. Could you share the lines of code at the point where the script fails?
Also, remote desktop will resize the desktop on the remote machine. Although QTP scripts are not inherently coordinate based, individual statements can be coordinate-based relative to an object. The resolution could be an issue in that regard. For example, imagine you had a line like Button.Click(5, 150) recorded on a higher resolution machine. But if you attempted to play it back on a lower resolution machine, and the 150 is out of bounds of the object on the lower resolution, it could cause an issue.
QTP does not use screen coordinates except as a last resort, if the objects are identified as high level objects (SwfTable in this case) you should be OK, if however QTP doesn't recognise the object it falls back to WinObject and screen coordinates.
If you're using Infragistics then you should know that they extend QTP's support with their TestAdvantage product which will probably solve your issue.
Edit:
#MatthieuF said:
In fact, we use the Infragistics plugin for QTP, and we still have the problem
Can you give me an example of a line that fails?
A few things:
You should be able to debug on the VM easily - just wait for it to stop, go into your object repository, and see if it can identify the object. If no then use object spy to figure out what properties are different between the OSes. If there is a difference then you can always set that property to a regular expression and have it check for both possibilities.
Assuming that isn't the issue we've run into problems using remote desktop with QTP if the Remote window is closed or minimized. For us, it was an issue where the clipboard can not be changed when an RDP window isn't visible, but there could be other surprises when using QTP that way.