[python-win32] Waiting for process & Intercepting Keys

[Tim Golden]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Steven M. Faulconer [mailto:geek at cfl.rr.com]
>Hello everyone,
>
> I'm my continuing drive to use Python more on our Windows 
> systems, I've written a number of scripts to do certain tasks.
> One script is setup to do some time recording for usage 
> information of the system. For the most part, the script works 
> fine, but part of the script also locks the screen, and that 
> is where I am having some minor issues. Please take 
> note that I'm still a beginner, so I'm sure this is ugly:
>
> os.system("rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation")

I realise that you didn't ask for this, but this could
 slightly more cleanly be done like this, using ctypes
 (http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/ctypes/)

import ctypes
ctypes.windll.user32.LockWorkStation ()

> This command will lock the work station correctly, the problem 
> is I need the script to pause until the screen is unlocked. 

This looks to be really quite tricky. Technically you could
 install a Windows system hook, but I don't think they've been
 wrapped for Python (altho' again ctypes is a possibility) but
 I've always managed to avoid them, because hooking in to the
 O/S as such a low level makes me nervous.

I'll try to have a look at a WMI-based solution, because that
 makes it easy to track process creation/death, but I don't
 think a new process is in fact created; I think it's the
 always-running winlogon.exe which is doing the business.

Sorry not to be any more help than that.

TJG



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