I work in a Windows Terminal Server enviroment where if you left the computer for a while, windows lock the session and terminal is power off.
What i need is the code needed to send a message to Windows for it to believe the user is in front of the PC (mouse or keyboard activity).
Thanks in advance
Can you run mstsc with the /console parameter? This will get you in console mode and wont time out. The screen will lock with the normal timeout, but you wont get disconnected. Be careful though, as anyone else trying to get into the console will then need to log you out in order to get on.
You can control session disconnect (connection is closed but session remains open and can be reconnected) and reset (connection and session are closed) timeouts via local or group policy.
Make sure screen saver on remote server and local PC is set to some ridiculous amount like 960 minutes (8 hours). Open a command prompt on the remote server. Tape the enter key down on your local keyboard. The system will interpret this as user activity. It won't affect performance or mess anything up. Any your boss will think you're working while you're off playing XBOX360, or watching a movie, or smooching with a co-worker in the emergency stairwell.
Related
When connected to a remote SSH host and my Mac goes to sleep after a few minutes of inactivity, I have to reload the whole window to re-establish a connection when I return.
What's the least energy-inefficient way of avoiding this wait-time whenever the connection was cut due to inactivity? Is there a way to keep the session active (or reconnect to it more smoothly without having to reload the whole window) without disabling sleep mode on my Mac entirely? If not, is there a way to automatically disable sleep mode only when a VS Code remote session is active?
For me, this wasn't specific to VSCode. Rather, it was a general problem with using ssh from a Mac. You may find this helpful https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/251244
In particular, adding
host your.remote.host
ServerAliveInterval 180
to your ~/.ssh/config
As in title. Is there any way to achieve this?
I have problem, because when you close remote desktop, gui and whole interface is being locked and any gui based applications or my autoit scripts won't work (they are crashing constantly).
I tried using 'tscon.exe' but this works only on windows server 2008.
I have the same issue, and I resolved it doing the following:
Connect to RD to your server with user "A"
From the remote computer, connect to RD to localhost to user "B" (create it if necessary)
From the new session, run anything you need.
Disconnect the FIRST session, with user "A".
In this way, the session running with user "B" will not be locked, and it will continue running your GUI controls.
Log off means the current session (created by logging in during RDP) is terminated. What you want is to keep the Logon Session live but disconnect the RDP.
Why not use AutoLogon to boot into console and run the scripts? However if the screen locks or someone RDPs and disconnects, the problem you are facing will reoccur.
What I have is to keep GUI and whole windows interface alive when i close remote desktop. Session is alive but gui and whole workstation is getting locked everytime I close rd.
I want to write a script that involves mouse click and stuff. I am little confused though. Is there a way mouse clicks (in the form of x and y co-ordinates) would work on a VPS which is logged on, but disconnected from the client?
Example:
MouseClick("left",588, 268)
To my knowledge, these VPSes don't have their own native screen resolution. I have already written the script for my local pc and it's working fine on my resolution. But when tried with the VPS, it doesn't work.
PS: I am running the script from the remote desktop itself and not from my local pc. Please correct me if there's anything I am doing wrong :)
Update: For anyone still looking for an answer, consider installing a vnc server, that way the screen resolution you specify is preserved even when not connected to the server.
Ex: https://www.realvnc.com/en/connect/download/vnc/
It's relevant to almost any automation tool, not only AutoIt.
Remote Desktop has its own GUI context only if it's connected to the remote PC. But you can lose focus for a Remote Desktop window (without disconnection & without minimizing) and continue other local work.
The same effect takes place for VNC server software.
One team in our organization uses it for massive test runs automation: a master server creates a remote session for each test machine and keeps them all connected until tests passes.
Use ControlClick to have the mouse click over RDP connections, even when you're not connected. For some reason it can still be iffy for me, but at least it worked more so that Click which was none at all.
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 am using the below JAVA code to capture the desktop of a remote machine
Robot robot = new Robot();
BufferedImage screenShot = robot.createScreenCapture(new Rectangle(Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getScreenSize()));
ByteArrayOutputStream imageBytes = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
ImageIO.write(screenShot, "PNG", imageBytes);
return imageBytes.toByteArray();
However the captured image is blank, when the terminal session to the remote machine is either minimized or disconnected. I appreciate your help in resolving the issue, at the very least the minimized scenario.
Configuration:
I have the same issues with a physical machine running windows 7 and a virtual machine running windows server 2008 R2.
More insights from MSDN:
Why you get black screen when you disconnect from RDP ?
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa383015%28VS.85%29.aspx
Here is my attempt to make things work, but none of the following did the trick:
How to get data when RDP window minimized ?
You can force the RDP display driver to send data when minized, try these steps and let me know how it goes:
1) Add the following key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client\ Created a new DWORD value and named it RemoteDesktop_SuppressWhenMinimized. Specified 2 as the value data.
Note: Also tried adding the registry key to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client\
2) Disable bitmap caching (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc737325(WS.10).aspx)
In the Remote Desktop Connection window, click Options.
On the Experience tab, verify that the Bitmap caching check box is selected. Or, to disable bitmap caching, clear theBitmap caching check box
If you minimize the Remote Desktop window, Windows switches the remote session to the GUI-less mode and does not display windows and controls. As a result, TestComplete (or TestExecute) will be unable to interact with the tested application’s GUI, as it does not exist and your automated GUI test will fail.
To work around the issue, you can change the Remote Desktop’s registry settings on your local computer (where you launch the Remote Desktop):
On your local computer, close all open Remote Desktop sessions.
Launch the Registry editor (regedit.exe).
Navigate to one of the following Registry keys, depending on whether you wish to modify the Remote Desktop settings only for the current user or for all users on the computer:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client
Create a DWORD value named RemoteDesktop_SuppressWhenMinimized and set it to 2.
Or you can do it programmatically by following steps:
Transparent the window
Restore the Window
Capture
Minimize it again
Remove transparency
We had similar problem in our project last year...we could find any stable and permanent solution....however here is how a work around worked for us...
We had to run on 5 remote desktops (which will take screens capture as well during failure) ..however as you have figured already if we disconnect session or minimise the RDC Window blank screenshot is captured. Therefore we had added one more VM to connect those other five test boxes. The task for that VM is to keep session active and resized to other 5 boxes...this worked for us.
If you connect a remote desktop to the test machine, make sure to reboot the machine when you are done, otherwise the desktop will remain locked and screen captures will not work.
I don't believe there is any other way around the issue.
I just configured the clients to auto logon, disabled the screen saver and installed a VNC server on each client.
Basically, make sure the screen is always on, and don't RDP into them.
This worked on both physical PCs and on virtual machines hosted on a Hyper-V server.
I even wrote a small .NET desktop client that ran multiple VNC clients inside a single window, so we could see what was happening on all the clients. We had an old PC running this with it's monitor on top of a cupboard to (a) let the developers see if any client had hung, had hundreds of browser windows open, etc. and (b) to look impressive for any non-developers walking past.
A simpler alternative to the above answers to to transmute the terminal session (RDP) into the console session. The session will then display to the physical screen (Switching the user of anyone currently logged into the physical machine). The following command does this:
for /f "skip=1 tokens=3" %%s in ('query user %USERNAME%') do (tscon.exe %%s /dest:console)