Disable screensaver

[malaki86]

I thought of something that might work as an easy way (hopefully) to disable the screensaver and/or the computers power scheme while Centrafuse is running.

What I was thinking is to use either the Sendkey function of Visual Basic, or use the SendInput Windows API. It could be set on a timer and send out an unused keystroke (such as Ctrl-Alt-Shift-Home) every so often. It may fool the screensaver/power scheme to think that the computer is actively being used.

If it could be made into a Plugin/DLL for CF, it would auto-run when CF starts, then it would also automatically end along with CF.

I'd love to try it right now just to see if it'd work, but I don't have VB on my laptop (that'll change this weekend). But, anyone think something like this would work?

[nintwala]

There is a way to set "Startup/Shutdown Commands" under General settings (Advanced Settings). If there is a command line that can be setup to set the power options or screen saver options, it can be made into a EXE (using AutoIT) or BAT file. One file can be launched at "Startup" and "Resume" to turn off the screensaver and power options, and another at "Sleep" and "Shutdown" to turn on.

[malaki86]

I found this on a website and it sounds exactly like what I'm wanting:

It seems that SendInput does something that SendKeys does not, and calls to it are detected by screen saver routines as mouse activity. Below is the VB6 source. Open a new project, drag a timer object to the form, and set the Timer1 to a 10 second fire (interval = 10000). What is convenient is that the actual routine doesn't need to move the mouse pointer at all. You just call with with a move amount of 0, so the event in injected into the mouse input stream, but no change occurs. Nice.

Option Explicit

Private Declare Sub CopyMemory Lib "kernel32" Alias "RtlMoveMemory" (pDst As Any, pSrc As Any, ByVal ByteLen As Long)
Private Declare Function SendInput Lib "user32.dll" (ByVal nInputs As Long, pInputs As INPUT_TYPE, ByVal cbSize As Long) As Long

Private Const MOUSEEVENTF_MOVE = &H1
Private Const INPUT_MOUSE = 0

Private Type MOUSEINPUT
  dx As Long
  dy As Long
  mouseData As Long
  dwFlags As Long
  dwtime As Long
  dwExtraInfo As Long
End Type

Private Type INPUT_TYPE
  dwType As Long
  xi(0 To 23) As Byte
End Type

Private inputEvent(0) As INPUT_TYPE

Private Sub Form_Load()
   Dim mouseEvent As MOUSEINPUT
   
   ' Load up the event record
   mouseEvent.dx = 0
   mouseEvent.dy = 0
   mouseEvent.mouseData = 0
   mouseEvent.dwFlags = MOUSEEVENTF_MOVE
   mouseEvent.dwtime = 0
   mouseEvent.dwExtraInfo = 0
    
   ' Copy the record into the input array
   inputEvent(0).dwType = INPUT_MOUSE
   CopyMemory inputEvent(0).xi(0), mouseEvent, Len(mouseEvent)
    
End Sub

Private Sub Timer1_Timer()
    Dim intX As Integer
    
    intX = SendInput(1, inputEvent(0), Len(inputEvent(0)))
End Sub

[Zerach]

Originally Posted by malaki86

I thought of something that might work as an easy way (hopefully) to disable the screensaver and/or the computers power scheme while Centrafuse is running.

What I was thinking is to use either the Sendkey function of Visual Basic, or use the SendInput Windows API. It could be set on a timer and send out an unused keystroke (such as Ctrl-Alt-Shift-Home) every so often. It may fool the screensaver/power scheme to think that the computer is actively being used.

If it could be made into a Plugin/DLL for CF, it would auto-run when CF starts, then it would also automatically end along with CF.

I'd love to try it right now just to see if it'd work, but I don't have VB on my laptop (that'll change this weekend). But, anyone think something like this would work?

why not just disable the screen saver and disable power scheme?

To Disable power scheme use

powercfg /setactive "Always On"

you can disable screen saver entirely using gpedit.msc or just through control panel...don't know if theirs a avable command line option. But a simple batch file should be enough.

Autoit is a great tool for screen scaping and sendkey operations but it's unreliable and can cause weird isssues if not scripted correctly, so script it correctly

[malaki86]

Nice - I never knew about the powercfg cmd line.

Here's what I did to make it easy now:

a) I created a batch file: monitor-power.bat
The file is:
@echo off
powercfg /change "speedswitch control" /monitor-timeout-ac %1

b) Centrafuse Startup command:
c:\program files\flux media\monitor-power 0

c) Centrafuse Shutdown command:
c:\program files\flux media\monitor-power 15

d) Set the screensaver to "None"

It now does exactly what I wanted. Thank you for the tip.

[nintwala]

good job malaki86.

[Zerach]

Originally Posted by malaki86

Nice - I never knew about the powercfg cmd line.

Here's what I did to make it easy now:

a) I created a batch file: monitor-power.bat
The file is:
@echo off
powercfg /change "speedswitch control" /monitor-timeout-ac %1

b) Centrafuse Startup command:
c:\program files\flux media\monitor-power 0

c) Centrafuse Shutdown command:
c:\program files\flux media\monitor-power 15

d) Set the screensaver to "None"

It now does exactly what I wanted. Thank you for the tip.

Leave it to Microsoft to create a utility that does what we want but not tell us it's there. I found this out while at work, I do image creating for laptops and researched a few options, this one was the best and it's built in.

Nice work on the batch file I might just use this.

You are welcome.

Cheers,

[malaki86]

I've tweaked it a bit, plus found a small utility for changing the screensaver:

startup.bat

@echo off
powercfg /change "speedswitch control" /processor-throttle-ac adaptive
powercfg /change "speedswitch control" /monitor-timeout-ac 0
powercfg /change "speedswitch control" /standby-timeout-ac 0
setscrtimeout 72000

shutdown.bat

@echo off
powercfg /change "speedswitch control" /monitor-timeout-ac 5
powercfg /change "speedswitch control" /standby-timeout-ac 15
powercfg /change "speedswitch control" /processor-throttle-ac degrade
setscrtimeout 600

The "speedswitch control" is the name of the power scheme I use on my computer. You'll need to change that to whatever matches your system (eg. "Always on", "Desktop", etc).

The "/processor-throttle-ac degrade/adaptive" controls whether you want your computer to throttle down when CF isn't in use or not. This isn't required.

The "setscrtimeout" is the utility for changing the screensaver timer. It won't accept "0" (it changes it to 1 minute), so I put a huge timer for the screen saver while CF is running, knowing I won't go 10hrs without touching the screen. The number after it is in seconds, not minutes.

I've attached the 2 bat files plus the "setscrtimeout" utility. All 3 files need to be in the same directory to run properly (I put mine in the "program files/flux media" directory).