[Solved] Necessity of Physical Simulation
lazarus / 34-Windows

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loaded · 2025-05-30 12:44

Hi All,
Can mouse or keyboard movements be physically simulated in the Windows
operating system? To prevent the screen saver from being activated.

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440bx · 2025-05-30 13:15

Quote from: loaded on May 30, 2025, 02:44:23 pmHi All,
Can mouse or keyboard movements be physically simulated in the Windows
operating system? To prevent the screen saver from being activated.
The answer to the those events being susceptible to be simulated is
yes but, not really physically as that would require a ring-0 driver
to fool the corresponding driver into believing a character was
retrieved by the keyboard controller or a physical mouse movement
occurred.

It's not hard to simulate keyboard or mouse events.  Check out the
following link:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winuser/nf-
winuser-sendinput

What I don't know is if the simulated input using that function will
prevent the screen saver from being activated but, it's fairly easy to
test.  My guess is it probably does.

HTH.

ETA:

Based on what it says in the following article:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/463813/programmatically-prevent-
windows-screensaver-from-starting

SendInput will prevent the screen saver from starting and apparently,
the call to SendInput doesn't even have to move the mouse to be
effective.  It can simply move the mouse to where the mouse already is
to prevent the screen saver from starting.

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loaded · 2025-05-30 13:34

Thanks 440bx, the tip you gave was like a small match burning a big
tree. I didn't think I would find a solution so quickly.

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ccrause · 2025-05-30 14:05

Quote from: loaded on May 30, 2025, 02:44:23 pmTo prevent the screen
saver from being activated.
While one can fake user interaction to prevent the screen saver from
starting, there is also a Wndows API to manage this more formally:
SetThreadExecutionState.  See for example this discussion.

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loaded · 2025-05-30 18:13

Thanks a lot for the extra information ccrause.  🧐