Finding a systems busy status. 1

[PM2000]

Hi,

I am writing an app that needs to know if the user has not been using the PC for a certain length of time. When the user has not used the PC for 5 minutes, I want the app to show busy, kind of like what MSN messenger does.

I am unable to find where Windows XP exposes this system value. Has anyone ever written anything like this?

Thanks in advance.

Peter

 

[chiph]

You can start a timer (use the one from the Threading namespace -- the others are tied to the Windows message pump and won't reliably raise events for you) to notify you when your time of interest has passed. The trick is to know when to start it, and when to stop it.

You can start it by listening for the Application.Idle event. It gets raised when the app is about to enter the idle state.

You would stop the timer (or maybe restart it..???) by adding a handler to the Application.MessageLoop. If you see any keyboard events or mouseclicks (mousemoves don't count) you would know the user is interacting with your app in some way, and you'd restart the timer.

Chip H.


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