Answer My Searches

This little script will detect when you hit certain number pad numbers and send the specified function keys on to Windows instead:

import win32com.client
import pythoncom
import pyHook # http://sourceforge.net/projects/uncassist

def translate_keystrokes(event):
    if event.Key=='Numpad6': #Next in Screen Saver
        print 'You hit numpad 6!'
        shell.SendKeys("{F7}")
        return False #blocks keystroke
    elif event.Key=='Numpad4': #Previous in Screen Saver
        print 'You hit numpad 4!'
        shell.SendKeys("{F6}")
        return False #blocks keystroke
    else:
        return True #Key stroke continues to Windows apps  

#object to let us send keystrokes
shell = win32com.client.Dispatch("WScript.Shell")
# create a hook manager
hm = pyHook.HookManager()
# watch for all keyboard events
hm.KeyDown = translate_keystrokes
# set the hook
hm.HookKeyboard()
# wait forever
pythoncom.PumpMessages()

Why on earth would I want to do this?
Well, this lets me control a screensaver application with a $10 number pad so that the laptop controlling the display can be tucked away out of site. The alternative was to buy this $80 programmable keypad. (If you hadn’t guessed, the screen saver inflexibly requires F6 to move to the next page.)

To make this little script I followed the pyHook examples here. And figured out how to send keystrokes here.

Finally this page gives you a run down on what WScript.Shell does. And this project looks like another promising alternative for sending keystrokes.

This will make your computer (at least one running Windows Server 2003) never lock after inactivity and not require ctl-alt-del to login in. It may be similar for Windows XP too.

Here’s the answer:

1. Goto Start>Run and type gpedit.msc
2. Once it comes up go to computer configuration go to Windows>Settings>local policies>security options
   (For Windows XP you’d go to: Windows Settings>Security Settings>Local Policies>Security Options)
3. From there you will see the require Ctl-Alt-Del setting. Disable it. (I’m not sure if you need to do this and this isn’t shown here in Windows XP.)
4. Next find the one that says “Amount of idle time required before suspending session” and change it to its maximum value 99999.

I found part of this answer here.

It was quite hard to to locate this gem of information on the web but here are all of the searches I tried:

1. “this computer is in use and has been locked” #The message I want to not see
2. disable “this computer is in use and has been locked”
3. “Server 2003″ lock after time
4. “Server 2003″ auto logoff after set time
5. “Server 2003″ locked

I wrote a nice AutoIt script to automate Omnipage14 because it offered no way whatsoever for a Python script to control it. Anyway everything worked except that I was running it under terminal services on another computer and whenever the terminal services window lost focus or I logged off, AutoIt just stopped running. So I spent quite a while searching and found these solutions:

The short answer is:
Give up! .. don’t run it under terminal services, try VNC instead.

The long answer is:
I searched for too many terms to even recall. I came across a lot of websites and a lot of advice for this problem. The basic problem is that when you’re not actively using terminal services, the desktop and everything GUI goes away somehow. That’s why Autoit stopped working. I tried setting up the AutoIt script to run as a service but nothing happened when I launched the service and it seemed like an overly-complex solution to research any further. The second solution I had come across (using VNC) seemed like a reasonable idea so I went that route and everything is now working fine.

Here are the discussions I found on this issue:
http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php?t4026.html
http://tinyurl.com/8yh3w
http://tinyurl.com/7wmvy