Stop currently running Windows screensaver from command line

Question

I have a number of Scheduled Tasks running on a Windows machine, which is design to run stand alone and show useful information to the office.

Part of it's use is to run a screensaver that itself shows useful information.

There are some scheduled tasks which need to display information to the screen, however as the screensaver is running these messages can't be seen until the screensaver it manually deactivated.

How can the currently running screensaver in Windows be deactivated from command script?

Solution 1

I had a eureka moment, I was making the approach too complex. All that's needed is:

kill -processname XXXX

Where XXXX is the name of the screensaver process

Solution 2

You can do this using PowerShell to move the mouse a pixel, deactivating the screensaver.

$Pos = [System.Windows.Forms.Cursor]::Position
[System.Windows.Forms.Cursor]::Position = New-Object System.Drawing.Point((($Pos.X) + 1) , $Pos.Y)

You can also try a 3rd party program, such as AutoIt, which allows you to script mouse movements.

Solution 3

The correct syntax would be:

taskkill /im PhotoScreensaver.scr /f

With of course the correct name of the running screensaver, which in my case is PhotoScreensaver.scr

Comments

[matan129]

Just clear this to me. The new screensaver won't show up because there is already one running?

[gronostaj]

What about "pressing spacebar" programmatically?

[Werner Henze]

What are these tasks? Programs programmed by you?

[Peter Bridger]

Yes, they're written by me

[Peter Bridger]

Unfortunately the simulated mouse approach didn't work :(

[Werner Henze]

Definitely not elegant, especially if the tasks are programs written by yourself.