I have a desktop computer that is hooked up to 3 different monitors of which only two can be active at any one time. One is a primary monitor and is always active. I can manually switch between the other two: one a monitor, another an HDTV.
The switch is a mechanical switch which only handles VGA (and at that, only the RGB components are actually switched) so there is no feedback to the computer from the other devices, thus windows can not make any automatic adjustments to change resolutions and things like that.
I want to make a batch file that will automatically switch the screen configurations and resolutions (hard coding the proper resolutions of course since we can't detect the other devices anyways) so that they are correct for the displays.
Where is the best place to get started? Where can I find library of commands (or whatever they are called) to do something like this? Lastly, is there anything I should be careful about when attempting something like this?
Thanks in advance,
-Faken
Try reschangecon (yes, there is a console version!).
It is safe, because it won't let you set settings that are not supported (without the force flag).
http://www.12noon.com/displaychanger.htm (It is free for personal use)
I've used ResSwitch to do this on my friend's HTPC that periodically forgot what resolution to drive his TV at, you call it like this: resswitch.exe 1920 1080 32 60
http://www.naughter.com/qres.html
The risk is it doesn't ask you to confirm, so you better be sure your monitor can handle the resolution you're asking for.
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I need to create a very simple program, that should run on raspberry pi without network connection. The program should first show one full-screen bitmap ("insert disk"), and after receiving somehow an external signal (disk inserted), another bitmap which would ask to input password. After inputting the password (each pushed button shows an asterisk *) the application should show yet another bitmap, which would inform whether the password was correct or not.
So in principle I would like to create something that looks like password screen in any Hollywood movie!
Raspberry should boot directly to the application.
I was expecting that this would be easy to do (and it would be if we could use Windows and Visual Studio), but I haven't yet found a simple tool to create this for pi. Booting Raspberry into browser with kiosk mode and creating HTML application seems like an overkill.
Although a browser in kiosk mode might look that a sledgehammer to crack a nut, I think you might find this nut harder than it looks.
It wouldn't be difficult to write a simple app in Java, or Python, or perhaps even C using GTK, that carries out the actions you want. You could have the app loaded when X starts, as an alternative to a desktop and Window manager. You could even do away with X altogether, and write some code that interacts directly with the video framebuffer and the keyboard hardware. Or, heck, go the whole hog, and have your code substitute for the operating system kernel :)
I would guess that even the simplest of these approaches involves more work than hacking something up using a HTML and JavaScript in a browser.
I would like to create a USB stick with a simple HTML file in it which opens when the stick gets plugged in. It is meant to be some kind of merchandise thing. Thing is that I read that Microsoft disabled Autorun on Windows 7 for security reasons. But despite that I have such a USB stick lying around which does the exactly the thing I'm looking for. Unfortunately it is not displayed as a removable drive, therefore I can not take a look into it.
Can anyone recommend a method, which works on as many devices (with different OS, different Settings) as possible?
i think you are searching for the autorun.inf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki.Autorun.inf
you can write your own autorun.inf and copy it on the stick (if it does not show up as removable disk format it, maybe run a data rescue tool first) if this will work depends on the os settings of the specific computer you plug in the stick. if autorun is disabled in the os it will not work...
Given that Outlook runs in most offices, and given that a screensaver may user CPU, or network file copies, or virus scans, or network installs by the admin (granted, that usually happens when you're logged out), and all the myriad other things that might occur on a Windows 7 desktop in an office environment, how could I possibly know that a user is idled out, and not just reading a PDF?
Do I use a set of metrics to sample at regular intervals and use that to determine "away" or do I need to monitor some file, is there a API that should be exposed?
I can't rely on screensavers being active, or the computer entering a specific power state, and I'm not sure what is exactly off-limits, but I also don't know what's on-limits, as it were.
I think you're looking for GetLastInputInfo, which tells you how long it's been since the user hit a key on the keyboard or wiggled the mouse (or touched a touch-enabled screen?).
I'm in need of help. The situation is the following:
We have a software that runs on Windows Mobile 5 and 6. It is deployed in around 15 cities on different devices (Motorola MC35, MC55, MC65, MC75, MC75A, ES400). It works perfectly fine everywhere except in one city. They have MC75A devices and every once in a while we get a helpdesk about our software disappearing from the device.
The most interesting part is when we log in to check the device, all we can see is a damaged/corrupted file system and the OS, which is set back to default.
We tried to reconstruct the problem here at our company, but we find it impossible. I'm wondering if anyone has ever bumped into this.
I'm gonna attach two images of the corrupted file system.
We use custom windows settings and AppCenter to protect the operating system from our customers. (They shouldn't be able to modify any settings on their own).
In general such corruption happens when the driver is interupted saving changes to the file system.
That can happen, for example, when a high priority thread consumes all cpu times.
It may also happen, when the device is hard reset, for example by taking the battery out during thed river is writing to the file system.
A low battery normally cannot result in that corruption:
a) as the device shuts down itslef with critcal battery power
and
b) the file system is in flash RAM (in contrast to Windows Mobile 2003 and before) and does not need battery power to hold data.
It is also possible that there is a bad behaving process doing these corruptions.
As you say you see this only in one city: What is the main difference with the devices there?
Are others also using the same device? Maybe the device series itslef or there firmware is faulty (contact symbol/motorola for new firmware or patches to the 'disk' driver)
Are the users in that area doing special things to the devices that others do not? For example remove the battery when they mean the device does not react?
Is the MC75A used in other areas and there it does not show the corruption?
You see, you have some more items to examine a rule for the corruption?
Our software should play sounds (not just small noises, but voice etc.). I wonder what about the volume control. The Windows Vista style guide lines says to define an application specific volume control in the Windows mixer.
But what about Windows XP and below? I don't think there is a way to get our control into the Windows mixer. BUT you can implement your own volume control, but if you don't modify the audio data, it cannot go louder than system wide volume (which might be very low or even mute).
The question is: should an application use it's own volume control or trigger the Windows volume control?
The problem is, that basic user doesn't even know where to setup the volume in Windows.
Most audio rendering frameworks (you don't mention which one you use) allow the user to control the audio of the stream passed from the audio rendering framework to the system audio engine. For example, DirectSound has a method IDirectSoundBuffer that allows you to set the volume for that sound buffer.
Per-application volume control (whether it's exposed via the system mixer or not) is a dramatically better experience for customers than an application controlling the master volume. Many machines (most current laptops for example) don't provide hardware volume controls and depend on the user to set the master volume to a comfortable level (which is a highly user specific value). If your application manipulates the master volume you're overriding the user choice and they're likely to be upset.
Btw, to be clear: I have no issues with MusiGenesis' choices either. For the specialized example of his application, that choice makes sense. Another similar example to MusiGenesis' example is a MIDI rendering application. If the application sometimes renders through hardware MIDI (with no volume control) and sometimes through software MIDI (with a volume control) it may make sense not to expose the volume control to the user to avoid confusion.
In my application (a software synthesizer/music composition tool) I actually don't touch the system volume or even offer a volume control for my own application. All my audio output is normalized to about 95% of the max possible level, and from that point the user can control the output volume either with the Windows volume control or the volume control on their speakers.
In my opinion, this is how a Windows audio application like this should behave, because typically when a software synthesizer is used it's the only application producing audio output, and the user already has two other ways of controlling volume (the Windows control and the speaker knob).
In the case of an application like yours, which is meant to play sounds in an environment where other applications may be making noise also, I think your application should only offer a way of lowering its own volume, without affecting the system volume. Most Windows users already know where the system volume control is (lower right toolbox), so it's kind of superfluous to add this control to your own application as well.
Our application needs to output voice as well, and also have different volume settings relative to other applications that may be running at the same time. We have a volume control that the user can change from within the application.
As such, in Windows 2000/XP, we do modify the system volume when our application gains focus, and set it back to the previous setting when we lose focus or when then application shuts down. This does work well, and does not seem to interfere with the workings of other audio based applications running at the same time (such as speech recognition software which is very sensitive to recording volume for example).
This is exactly the same behaviour as Vista and Windows 7, except that they do the work of maintaining the individual volume levels for each application (and in this case we disable the previously mentioned code).