How can I unlock the windows lockscreen with Delphi? I didn't found anything on Google or Stackoverflow. I already tried to enter my password using keybd_event but it seems like the events dont work on the lockscreen.
You cannot unlock the lock screen programmatically from user space. That is by design.
OK, let's clarify that. Using documented APIs, you cannot do this. You need to reverse engineer undocumented APIs as #Remko has done for his SasLibEx product.
Remko Weijnen has very interesting projects in this direction. He has released a command-line tool (Winstation Locker) which is capable to unlock local/remote Windows XP station, without knowing the password of the user who has locked the computer.
For Windows Vista and later he has developed SasLibEx** library which can unlock even specific terminal services sessions, again without username/password.
Both methods require you to have Administrative privileges/account at the destination computer.
PLEASE NOTE, all these tools use nasty hacks that may be considered illegal, inappropriate, intolerant or criminal(?). It should be discussed with your Clients/Employer and should be used with caution!
** SasLibEx is a commercial product
Steamlink (a piece of hardware that allows you to stream your steam games to a big screen) currently has an issue, that if your screen is in a different part of the house, in order to play you need to walk to your PC unlock it and then walk back to your big screen.
In order to make it less painful, people in the community came up with this script:
#powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy unrestricted -Command "$sessionid=((quser $env:USERNAME | select -Skip 1) -split '\s+')[2]; tscon $sessionid /dest:console" 2> UnlockErrors.log
It can unlock your PC remotely. You can call tscon.exe from Delphi to emulate the same.
This actually can be done using powershell, psexec and windows onscreen keyboard. While a program cannot send input to winlogon, the windows osk can, and sure enough a program can send input to osk.
NOTE: The following is a remote solution.
As far as i know, Keyboard events wont work on lock screen unless you switch from Default Desktop to Winlogon desktop(Desktop referring to a container of all activities)
[Background]
Default desktop is the one you use when reading this post.
Winlogon would be the one that is set as active when you press Ctrl+Alt+Del
[XP]
You would need to Switch from Default to WinLogon Desktop[Check reference] and then you would be able to unlock machine by getting Window handle for Unlock Computer
IntPtr windowHandle = (IntPtr)FindWindow(null, "Unlock Computer");//Getting Window handle
Send username and password to respective edit boxes.
Reference
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/16197/Remotely-Unlock-a-Windows-Workstation
[Win7]
Run tsdiscon.exe from remote. Not sure how this works; but for me, it unlocks the Locked Screen.
Related
How can I login into a locked windows, using some command in a .BAT file?
I can lock the screen easily from my Java program : RunDll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation
Is there any way to login later automatically (from my running Java program), if I know the password?
No, doesn't work - by design. The login dialog runs in the secure desktop. That's why you see your screen darken when you switch to that desktop.
The goal of the secure desktop is to protect against the sort of manipulation that you are trying to achieve. IOW, even if there was a bug in Windows that would allow it today, it likely would be patched next week.
I need to run a GUI script (AutoHotKey, which makes mouse clicks and press keys) on:
A different windows user (i.e. I run the script, then switch user
while keeping the session active)
A remote Amazon windows server (using remote desktop) where I also
run the script then close the Remote Desktop while keeping the
instance running
Unfortunately, in both cases, the script doesn't run as it seems that Windows enters a "GUI-less" mode where all GUI components are not active anymore.
Is there any solution to this?
Any hint would be greatly appreciated as I've now lost days trying to solve this!
Many thanks, Thomas
I do not believe this is possible due to the way Remote Desktop is implemented. When you close the RD connection, the GUI is no longer drawn. Therefore, AutoHotkey is unable to perform mouse clicks and key presses.
A possible workaround would be to make some registry tweaks (if possible on your server) which allow GUI interaction while minimized.
Locate HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client
Create RemoteDesktop SuppressWhenMinimized as DWORD with a value of 2
Registry Tweak Source
I need to create a program that can lock a Windows screen and prompt for a username and password.
It can be in any language but something without .net would be preferable in case I were to want to run it in an older version of Windows or WinPE.
I need it to not allow any other input in any way until the correct username and password have been put in.
It does not matter is the screen behind the prompt is blacked out or if it shows the desktop but doesn't allow the user to click.
Does anyone have any suggestions where I should begin?
I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to accomplish with this knowledge (sounds rather disruptive to the user imo), but you may be able to use the following knowledge to your advantage:
pressing CTRL+ESC simulates the Windows key
Windows key + L locks the computer
I have a user that is currently running my Winforms app on Win7. My app allows users to select rows from an open Excel spreadsheet and drag-n-drop them onto the app. However, this user cannot do the drag-n-drop. The cursor changes to the "no" cursor (little circle with line through it) and the operation won't complete.
I was researching drag-n-drop and Win7 and everything I found points to UAC and/or UIPI. I was looking for some solutions and am not sure if any of the below would work:
If the user logs in as admin (and as a result runs my app as admin) would that allow drag-n-drop to work?
Does the user need to turn off or change the settings of UAC/UIPI in order to be able to drag-n-drop?
I am not sure what the issue is. My app usually runs from C:/Documents and Settings/... (C:/Users/... on Win7). Does where it is running from matter? Does drag-n-drop not work because the user is not running my app with enough permissions? Are his Excel and my app on different permission levels? If so, what can be done about that? Note that even though my app allows users to just drag the file directly, that doesn't work either.
Also, is there any way I can have the user reproduce this issue with other apps? Are there apps that come with Win7 that he can see the same problem with. For example, can this be reproduced using Notepad?
Thanks.
Explaining this problem away by UIPI is a very long stretch. It doesn't have anything to do with whether or not the user is logged-in as an admin, that doesn't affect UAC and your program will be running with that same account anyway. The only way UIPI could kick in to stop a D+D is when your program is elevated and Excel is not.
To get yourself elevated requires work and doesn't happen by accident. You'd have to include a manifest so that the user gets the UAC prompt, you'd know about that. Or the user would have to change the desktop shortcut and tick the "Run this program as an administrator" option, she's know about that. While UIPI can be bypassed for Windows messages (ChangeWindowMessageFilter), it cannot for Drag and Drop so if any elevation is going on then your stuck. The ultimate test is to simply ask the user to put the UAC slider all the way down.
The much more likely scenario is that your DragEnter event handler simply isn't happy with the data it sees and therefore doesn't assign the e.Effect property. If you can't get a debugger on-site then write a little test program that logs the values of e.Data.GetFormats() plus whatever else you use to check if the drop is acceptable. And don't forget the obvious: the user simply fumbling the drag somehow.
I'ved developed a c# application that captures screens using bitblt and sends keyboard and mouse events using calls to keybd_event and mouse_event.
According to Microsoft I needed to modify the app.manifest with:
requestedExecutionLevel level="highestAvailable" uiAccess="true"
Sign the application and place it in a trusted location (program files).
I have done all of these to get the application to run under elevated priviledges under Vista but when UAC dialogs appear it does not capture those screens and the keyboard and mouse events do not reach the UAC dialog.
I am guess that UAC runs in a different desktop?? if so, how would i capture that? and how can i detect when the desktop switches to a UAC dialog in c#? or have i just missed a step?
UAC runs on the secure desktop, only trusted processes running on the system account are allowed to run in that context.
This is to prevent exactly what you are trying to achieve - processes spoofing or capturing user input.
You cannot. The UAC desktop is secure because it doesn't allow anyone to access it.
To detect the desktop switch event, I would try to use SENS or WTSRegisterSessionNotification. But it doesn't look very promising.