I have been working on an app in Visual Studio 2015 (C++). It's a kiosk app for my school's tech support. Basically, it's a support site that will run in a kiosk. I need to figure out how to lock windows so it only runs that program. It would also be helpful to run the program in fullscreen mode. Keep in mind that all of the kiosks run Windows 7.
Set registry key
HKCU SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
Shell="c:\path\to\whatever.exe"
Disallow task manager via security of taskmgr.exe (add a deny read + deny execute to the binary)
Set autologn:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
DefaultUserName = whatever
DefaultPassword = whatever
Have a boot disk handy. The only way to reverse this is to boot the boot disk and undo one of the steps after mounting the appropriate hive.
you can create your program with main window in full screen mode and popup:
hWnd = CreateWindowEx(WS_EX_CLIENTEDGE|WS_EX_APPWINDOW|WS_EX_TOPMOST,
lpClsName,
"MDI Project under Visual C++ WINAPI",
WS_BORDER|WS_POPUP,
...);// add the remaining parameters
and find taskmgr.exe and hide it and start menu button and hide them also:
hTaskBar = ::FindWindow ("Shell_TrayWnd", "");
hStart = ::FindWindowEx(GetDesktopWindow(), NULL, "Button", "Start");
ShowWindow(hTaskBar, SW_HIDE);
ShowWindow(hStart, SW_HIDE);
so your program looks like easycafe or handycafe
I actually switched from C++ to C#, so I'm gonna explain my answer with C#.
I used a keyboard hook library to capture keyboard input and block all non-letter/number input so alt-f4, alt-tab etc. would not work. I then determined a closing sequence of characters using another keyboard hook (LWin+C+Home+F12+PrtSc).
As for Ctrl-Alt-Del, that cannot be disabled (as far as I know) because it is a system function, so I just left that as it is.
I also got the bounds of the screen and set the size of the window to the maximum screen size at application launch, as well as whenever the app is resized or moved. This essentially makes it so the app covers the task bar, and the bar with the close and minimize buttons is also covered, but if someone found a way to move it it would immediately go back to it's full size.
I also set up autologin as was detailed in a previous answer, but I just didn't do it through code.
Related
The win32 API's SetCursorPos moves the mouse to a location on the screen. However, sometimes it does nothing.
See the following C++ code (Visual Studio 16.8.1, Windows 10)
#include <iostream>
#include <windows.h>
int main()
{
while (true)
{
std::cout << "Hello World!\n";
SetCursorPos(100, 200);
Sleep(2000);
}
}
Every 2 seconds, if SetCursorPos works then the cursor teleports to (100, 200). This works normally.
However if I leave this running and open the built-in Windows app called "On-Screen Keyboard", SetCursorPos no longer works (the cursor no longer teleports every 2 seconds).
Note: If trying this yourself, On-Screen Keyboard usually unfocuses itself automatically. To keep it focused to observe SetCursorPos not working, alt+tab to it, which causes it not to unfocus itself.
There are other third-party applications that, when in foreground, also seem to obstruct SetCursorPos. (When I observed those, I wasn't using the above C++ script. I was using the Python package mouse which uses SetCursorPos under the hood.)
How are these applications able to "swallow" my SetCursorPos API calls, and is there a different API or technique I can use in place of SetCursorPos to not allow those applications to interfere?
A physical USB mouse, as well as remote desktop software such as TeamViewer and Anydesk, are not obstructed by such applications, which leads me to believe they utilize some pathway besides SetCursorPos to get reliable mouse movement.
The answer is admin privileges.
As explained by #chris in the comments, some programs have elevated privileges, and when they are in the foreground (and thus, accepting user input), Windows doesn't let programs without elevated privileges control the mouse or keyboard. Otherwise, untrusted programs would be able to utilize trusted programs to do things untrusted programs aren't normally allowed to do.
Think of it like this. A wizard without FBI security clearance shouldn't be allowed to use an Imperius Curse on an FBI agent to effectively gain clearance.
See these links others supplied in comments: relevant SO post #1, relevant SO post #2, tangential Windows accessibility article.
Solution: run your mouse-control program with elevated privileges, too.
If running your program in Cmd, for example, open Cmd as admin by right-clicking the Cmd icon in the Start Menu or Task Bar and select "Run as admin", and then run your script inside it. If your program is a batch file, you can right-click a shortcut to it and "Run as admin".
I need a context menu entry for each program in the taskbar. Want to add an entry which immediately terminates (UNIX/Linux-like signal SIGKILL) the process. There a lot of questions on this site, how it's done for the explorer or desktop. But is it also possible to add such an option to the context menu of the taskbar?
To clarify the question, according to my comments:
The current problem:
I have a program (not Firefox) which randomly crashes. The program is in fullscreen mode. But if I want to close the window of the program with Exit window, it takes a long time that Windows kill the program. When I try to open the Task Manager the program immediately grabs the user input and I have no chance to interact with the Task Manager. So my solution was to add a context menu item in the taskbar to quit the task of the program. According to a user comment, I test the option "Always on top" in the Task Manager. Didn't know that. But I haven't tried it yet. I'm also interested for further projects, if there is a function in WINAPI or Windows Registry to add an item.
To avoid down-votes:
I'm not interested to hack Windows or the application. Solutions with code injection are taboo for me. Want a clean solution, if even possible. I want improve my Windows version. Adding also some additional information (process information) in the context menu.
Have currently found this (Registering shell extension handlers).
Has anybody used this before? I think it's sound promising.
There is no API to extend this menu like that. Applications can customize the top of the menu with ICustomDestinationList but there is no way to add entries for all applications.
For a personal use project, you could inject a .dll in the taskbar instance of Explorer.exe and add your item after figuring out the address of the function where the menu is created. This address can of course change after you upgrade Windows so it is not a very generic solution. Using the public symbols might help but you still have to expect it to break from time to time when Microsoft changes part of their taskbar code.
You don't need to change code in explorer.exe, because you can close a program by doing the keyboard shortcut: Alt + F4.
I have created a windows application in C++ and I want to make so whenever I run it, it doesn't steal focus from whichever window is currently focused(or maybe steal the focus and give it back right away). I'm not creating any window so i'm not sure how to change the window style, my program runs in the background.
I couldn't find any answer that worked for C++, is there any way I can do this?
When you start your application by clicking on the EXE or shortcut, Windows Explorer takes focus, not your app. The only way to start your app and not let Windows Explorer take focus is to start your program when Windows starts, via registry key.
Make sure you use the extended style WS_EX_NOACTIVATE when using CreateWindowEx().
See the Microsoft Docs for CreateWindowEx.
In linux and when installing packages etc. There are some installers that have a progress bar and a dos window which shows the files being extracted etc. How can i add this window to my C++ Win32 programs so that i can have it showing the tasks im doing? I cannot find any documentation on MSDN.
Question: How can i add a console window (if that's what its called, sure looks like one) in my program to show the details of the task at hand being done?
Here is a window with what i am asking.. (personal info so I erased the details. :]
You cannot embed a real console window inside another window (although a windowed process can have a separate console window). While it looks like a console window / command prompt, it is just a matter of appearances. What you want to do is create a sub-window/control with similar characteristics as a console window and then redirect the console output from the application(s) being run to append to that sub-window. For more information on how to do redirect the console output in Windows, see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/190351.
That "dos window" is a regular edit control: CreateWindow(ES_MULTILINE, EDIT, ...
However, it has the font set to a fixed-width one (Looks like courier). This is done by sending WM_SETFONT to the edit control.
#user995048 says "You cannot embed a real console window inside another window". But "cannot" is a strong word! I can run an entire virtualized computer in a window if I wish. :) So one can quite reasonably intuit that there are ways of doing what you say.
Sure, it is true that what you've seen are almost certainly cases of output redirection into a custom widget, designed to mimic the simple appearance of a terminal. However...if you want to embed one application's window inside another, there are things you can look into which might fit. Cooperative methods exist like GtkPlug, for instance:
http://developer.gnome.org/gtk/2.24/GtkPlug.html
To actually capture a not-designed-to-cooperate app's window and throw it in your app would be trickier. But possible, just as screen captures and virtual machines are possible. Probably best to avoid that sort of thing unless there's really a cause for it, though...
Try this
http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/misc/misc/article.php/c277/
link. I think the solution provided is what you need.
I tried it many years ago and it worked. I have not tried it in newer versions of windows though.
Having setup C++ app originally using MS specific keyboard journaling hook (WH_JOURNALRECORD) we find that it does not work on Vista unless run as administrator with uiAccess enabled. MSDN Question - Journaling hooks on Vista?
We want to record a key sequence from the user in a friendly way that will be repeated at some later date. The user presses a record button, a dialog is displayed with a stop button and the recorded keys.
One advantage of using the journaling hook was that you only got keystrokes which did something. Holding down shift didn't report 100 shift keys, but did report usage when you hit a letter.
Another advantage was that you could set the focus to an area outside of the application, say another applications window, and record the action as the user interacted.
Asides from making the keyboard capture part of the existing app a separate executable which runs as administrator with uiAccess, I'm seeking other ideas on how to record keystrokes that work on windows for 2K, 2K3, 2K8, XP, Vista.
Edit: I know there is a security concern with just recording anything, obviously if you could do such a thing without the users notice you have your typical keystroke logger for hacking purposes. Soooooo.....
Is there a way to make journaling work, for this user, and their apps, running at the same level (or lower) and capture keystrokes? having it popup the vista security are you sure dialog would be allright, but the process cannot be marked with uiAccess (otherwise it won't interact properly with the rest of the system) and it will in 98% of cases be run by users without rights to elevate to administrator.
Even if you could, you'd probably would find Microsoft fixing that bug in the next patch. The change in Vista was intentional, and there's a clear way (uiAccess==true) to still do what you want.
We have worked around the main issues by using SetWindowsHook instead.
const HMODULE hDLL = ::GetModuleHandle(DLL_NAME);
::SetWindowsHookEx(WH_KEYBOARD_LL, myKeyboardProcCallback, hDLL, 0);
The callback now has to manage the keystroke information and translating it into usable sequences - ie don't record multiple ctrl presses when heeld down to press ctrl+key.