How to detect system activity in my app?

13 Jan 2006 3:09 PM

Terry Olsen

I have a chat application. I want it to show the user as "away" if no
activity on the computer occurs for a certain amount of time.

I have a timer that I set for the correct interval, when it ticks, the chat
status changes to Away.

How can I detect any activity (mouse move, keypress, etc) on the computer
(not just in my app)?

Also, there's no Timer.Reset. So is the only way to reset the timer back to
zero by stopping and restarting the timer?

14 Jan 2006 1:44 PM

m.posseth

Well in the old VB6 days i did this with a global keyboard and mouse hook

with GetAsyncKeyState and GetCursorPos API`s

so i guess you need to wrap thee two api`s in a class in VB.Net

regards

Michel Posseth [MCP]

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"Terry Olsen" <tolse***@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23dazaNFGGHA.516@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
>I have a chat application. I want it to show the user as "away" if no
>activity on the computer occurs for a certain amount of time.
>
> I have a timer that I set for the correct interval, when it ticks, the
> chat status changes to Away.
>
> How can I detect any activity (mouse move, keypress, etc) on the computer
> (not just in my app)?
>
> Also, there's no Timer.Reset. So is the only way to reset the timer back
> to zero by stopping and restarting the timer?
>