Minimize a program on start up - batch-file

I have a program which I'm struggling to get opened and minimized through a script (Platform: Windows 7 Pro). I have tried startup /minimize, I've tried sendkeys. I think the problem is that when the program is open and you press Alt+Spacabar+n, the Minimize option is greyed out.
Some background: the application needs to stay open at all times for us to send data down from our servers. The users tend to close the application if it just opens on their screens (without minimizing). It can't be run as a service because the users also need to use application in the foreground at certain times. I can't have 2 instances of it running in Task Manager because it causes issues in the software.
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

That sounds like it is by developer design, as if they removed the minimize ability on purpose. If it is an in-house app a simple edit/recompile of the source could alleviate the issue. If it is third party, discuss with vendor, ideally they could add a notification icon in the clock area keeping the app open while minimized.

Related

Developing application that represents same screen across multiple browser windows of same machine using AngularJS

I have to create one application that represents the same screen(sharing the state of the view/screen) across multiple browser windows of same machine using AngularJS.
During my analysis I found perhaps AngularJS is not the best technology to handle such scenarios, please find below my thoughts:
If I open the same application in second window of the browser after
opening it in the first one, I need to copy the full
state(rootScope/scope/services) to other window
If user performs some action in one window I need to update the other screen/window accordingly for which I need to use web sockets
Complexity of scope digest cycles execution
Please suggest.
I faced kinda the same scenario while working on chat sessions where the user can open multiple chat windows (as popup windows) while the parent site is open. I used local storage for handling some of its scenarios. I used angular-local-storage for this.
Note: Make sure you are handling (deleting/updating/adding) the data properly while storing it in local storage of browser. Graceful execution is the key or else you'll end up with many bugs.
Hope it helps !

Show windows form over locked screen

I'm developing an application to run in background. This application is used to capture user’s activity on their system. Application is working very fine.
Now, I need to display a windows form over locked screen. Just like this:
Can any one help me! How can I show any windows form over locked screen?
Not possible, for security reasons no application should be shown when the screen is locked.
The only thing remotely similiar might be a Kiosk App:
Is the Windows.ApplicationModel.LockScreen namespace available for non-kiosk use?
There are a few different things here that are probably confusing things. unfortunately they are not very common scenarios so documentation is lacking.
You can use the Windows.ApplicationModel.LockScreen namespace for customising the display of the lock screen. This can be used to change the wallpaper or notification counts. It is probably the most common form of lock screen customization as it can be done by any app.
You can also use the functionality in this namespace to create an alternative lock screen. This could have different behaviour to the process of swipe up and enter password/PIN or Microsoft Hello face detection.
Creating such an app and distributing through the store requires extra permissions than 3rd party developers typically have.
"Kiosk mode" apps are created as apps that run above the lock screen. Such apps have no real connection to lock screen replacements but are related in their use of similar underlying elements of the OS.
In terms of what you are trying to achieve, it sounds like you should be able to do this by declaring the windows.lockScreen extension and then using LockApplicationHost to do the actual unlocking. As mentioned above the lack of a way for 3rd parties to distribute such apps through the store means there is a lack of documentation in this area but it should be possible.
One thing to take note of in such an app is an under even greater memory/resource constraints than a typical app and so you should keep this in mind during your planning and development.
I know this is an old question but for anyone still looking:
It is a security risk don't do it.
If you still want to do it this could help: SampleHardwareEventCredentialprovider
You will have to play with WinAPI and CredentialProviders but it is working demo and will show simple windows dialog with a button at lockscreen

app-icon of no-gui-app bounces a few minutes in the dock

I’m about to deploy an application without a GUI or console-output. It works flawless but the application icon bounces for like 5 minutes after launching in the dock.
I want to keep the dock-icon (so no LSUIElement=1) but get rid of the bouncing.
Any ideas?
If you your application to appear in the Dock, it will need to have a Cocoa event loop and some amount of GUI (I believe it'll need at a menu bar, at a minimum, and should be able to at least handle a quit event).
Depending on what your application is and how it works, this may or may not be feasible. You'll have to provide more information for us to provide more specific advice.

Winforms app as Scheduled task

I've got a winforms app that I developed to do batch processing on tens of thousands of students, now we're trying to run it nightly as a scheduled task.
I personally find it useful to be able to login to the box and see how it's processing by looking at the GUI, though the standard way it to convert it into a commandline app.(which radically limits the amount of screen realestae I can use for loggin messages)
Can I run the app as a schedueld task, the IT Guy whos scheduling says it's not running because it's a winform app. Are there any tricks needed to get it to run well, or am I forced to rewrite it as a commandline app with it's 80 char width limit.
Basicaly I just echo the log file to the screen in realtime to make debugging issues easier. So the gui is output only.
Its' running as the currently loggedin user, but the issue is that it does not run if the user is not currently logged in on the box,so when we leave for the night it fails to run.
Thanks,
Eric-
You need to make sure it is running as the currently logged in account. If it runs as 'system' I don't think it will show up correctly.
I have one of these myself... and despise it. It only exists because I haven't had a chance to rewrite it into a proper service. Don't forget there are more ways to log than just outputting to the console. ;)

Auto update dialog / Notification for WPF Application

I want a automatic update notification in my application. A message box should appear which tells that an update is available, if user wants then it can download the latest version in downloads folder of windows. Nothing else (user will install it manually) not application.
-I'm using Installshield so no Click once solution.
Thanks
If you want an out-of-the-box solution to this problem you're likely to be disappointed. I haven't found anything that works except ClickOnce, and I dislike it. I did find this:
http://windowsclient.net/articles/appupdater.aspx
My solution was to roll my own. It's actually not that difficult. I wrote a small bootstrapper application that first checks for updates, downloads them if necessary, and then launches my application in a new AppDomain. Pretty easy.
If you want to check for updates while your app is running, you need to write and add a component/class to your project that performs that task, and informs the user (MessageBox or whatever) that an update is available. If they choose to perform the update then you need to launch your bootstrapper (so it can fetch the updates) and kill your current process.
All of this is very possible with a little time and some custom code. It's not as difficult as it sounds. The biggest thing is determining how configurable you want your custom solution to be because that can affect when/where your bootstrapper goes to look for updates (I built mine to look for updates on a network share).
http://autoupdatewpf.codeplex.com/
i found one. This one is quite simple and solve the purpose.

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