[sims] Sims.net timeout

[RichB]

Morning,

 

Is there a way of making sims timeout after not been used? sick of staff leaving it open in full display over breaks and lunch! have tried logging there machines off if not active for over 20 minutes but this caused world war 3!

 

Thanks

[meastaugh1]

Morning, Is there a way of making sims timeout after not been used? sick of staff leaving it open in full display over breaks and lunch! have tried logging there machines off if not active for over 20 minutes but this caused world war 3! Thanks

we have a monitoring process that runs in the background that will invoke a screen lock after a period of administrator-defined inactivity only when processes such as pulsar.exe are running. The purpose is to reduce the risk when staff leave SIMS logged on and to encourage them to close it when not in use.

[vikpaw]

You could enforce a screen lock into their profiles couldn't you by group policy. That will keep everything protected without closing them down.

[jayemm]

@meastaugh1 that sounds good. Where did you get that from or did you make it yourself? Care to share it.

[meastaugh1]

@meastaugh1 that sounds good. Where did you get that from or did you make it yourself? Care to share it.

 

sorry for late reply, only just noticed your message. will try to send you a link later today. It was created by one of my former colleagues.

[vikpaw]

sorry for late reply, only just noticed your message. will try to send you a link later today. It was created by one of my former colleagues.

Care to share publicly, i'm sure many others would find it useful...?

[meastaugh1]

Sure, see attached: MIS Monitor.zip

[vikpaw]

Cheers that's awesome and well documented as well

Will pass to the IT Manager to see what he thinks.

 

The .mst needs to be opened in Visual Studio for editing? I don't have it installed here. Or, you can just alter at install by command line or in registry post install right?

 

The default value in the manual still shows 45 secs in the table.

 

I'm thinking you could extend this in the future to handle multiple processes, but put them in an array with individual timeouts for each, and also maybe expand the resultant effects, so for some processes you could just terminate the program, put on screensaver etc.

I have a policy here of no SIMS after midnight, so having it terminate the process at a set time would also be useful.

 

How frequently does it check the processlist? I can see this being useful for terminating games too.

 

Don't waste time on it, but just thinking if you wanted to keep tinkering.

[meastaugh1]

The .mst needs to be opened in Visual Studio for editing? I don't have it installed here. Or, you can just alter at install by command line or in registry post install right?

No, you just need a plain old MSI table editor, such as Orca or InstEd It. Specifying the properties at the command line (as documented) is just as valid as using a transform file. I don't recommend you modify the registry directly for anything other than testing. The reason being that at some point Windows Installer will likely reset the values to those specified in the MSI/MST.

The default value in the manual still shows 45 secs in the table.

Yes, I believe we did initially use a timeout of 45 seconds, then later increased it to one minute, then two, because a timeout that short is particularly frustrating for end-users, as you might imagine.

 

I'm thinking you could extend this in the future to handle multiple processes, but put them in an array with individual timeouts for each, and also maybe expand the resultant effects, so for some processes you could just terminate the program, put on screensaver etc.

I have a policy here of no SIMS after midnight, so having it terminate the process at a set time would also be useful.

Thanks for the suggestions, but tbh further development in unlikely. There have been no changes since it was created > five years ago.

 

How frequently does it check the processlist? I can see this being useful for terminating games too.

I believe it checks every 1 second.

Edited September 26, 2011 by meastaugh1

[vikpaw]

..

Thanks for the suggestions, but tbh further development in unlikely. There have been no changes since it was created > five years ago.

..

Thanks. I'd love to have a go at modifying it but don't have the time. Especially just the bit about terminating the process at a set time.