Wiggling the mouse

Question

OK. This is a bit of a vanity app, but I had a situation today at work where I was in a training class and the machine was set to lock every 10 minutes. Well, if the trainers got excited about talking - as opposed to changing slides - the machine would lock up.

I'd like to write a teeny app that has nothing but a taskbar icon that does nothing but move the mouse by 1 pixel every 4 minutes.

I can do that in 3 ways with Delphi (my strong language) but I'm moving to C# for work and I'd like to know the path of least resistance there.

Answer 1

for C# 3.5

without notifyicon therefore you will need to terminate this application in task manager manually

using System; using System.Drawing; using System.Windows.Forms;  static class Program {     static void Main()     {         Timer timer = new Timer();         // timer.Interval = 4 minutes         timer.Interval = (int)(TimeSpan.TicksPerMinute * 4 / TimeSpan.TicksPerMillisecond);         timer.Tick += (sender, args) => { Cursor.Position = new Point(Cursor.Position.X + 1, Cursor.Position.Y + 1); };         timer.Start();         Application.Run();     } } 

Answer 2

The "correct" way to do this is to respond to the WM_SYSCOMMAND message. In C# this looks something like this:

protected override void WndProc(ref Message m) {     // Abort screensaver and monitor power-down     const int WM_SYSCOMMAND = 0x0112;     const int SC_MONITOR_POWER = 0xF170;     const int SC_SCREENSAVE = 0xF140;     int WParam = (m.WParam.ToInt32() & 0xFFF0);      if (m.Msg == WM_SYSCOMMAND &&         (WParam == SC_MONITOR_POWER || WParam == SC_SCREENSAVE)) return;      base.WndProc(ref m); } 

According to MSDN, if the screensaver password is enabled by policy on Vista or above, this won't work. Presumably programmatically moving the mouse is also ignored, though I have not tested this.