Windows XP accounts
 

My home PC is running Windows XP and everyone in the family has his/her own account. My kids are notorious for leaving their accounts logged in with games running. Does anyone know of a utility that will automatically log an account out after a specified period of inactivity, or at a scheduled time. Thanks.

If you are interested in prime95 running all the time, install it as a service. This is done automatically when you click the "start at bootup" option and have administrator privileges.

Yes, I've got Prime95 installed as a service and it's running all the time. That part works fine. The problem is that by the end of the day, I've usually got 3 or 4 accounts that have been left logged in with various software (usually games) running. I'm trying to find a way to get back some of the CPU cycle that are being wasted by automatically logging my kids' accounts out if the keyboard and mouse have been idle for a while. Does that make sense?

Aha! Sorry can't help you there.

As administrator, you can normally log in their accounts and log off...IIRC

This is pretty much what I do now ... whenever I log in, I log everyone else out, but there's an awful lot of time wasted in between (my loggins).

My "normal" iteration times run in the .150s. If my youngest is playing something simple like pinball, it might go to .200. If my daughter is playing Clifford the Big Red Dog, it goes to about .600. If my older son has been playing Star Wars or Wheel of Time, it could easily go to 10 or 12 seconds [B]per iteration[/B].

Thanks for the suggestions guys, but I'm gathering that there may not be a utility to do what I'm looking for. Does anyone else have any ideas?

If you have Windows XP Professional, try the following procedure (it is supposed to be used by Admins to force user logout after a set period of inactivity, as a security measure):

Use Windows Explorer to locate the Winexit.scr file in the Windows 2000 Resource Kit folder on your hard disk.

Right-click the Winexit.scr file, and then click Install.

The Display Properties dialog box appears with the Screen Saver tab active. The Logoff Screen Saver entry is automatically selected. Click Settings.

Select the Force application termination check box to force programs to quit.

In the Countdown for n seconds box, type the number of seconds for which the logoff dialog box appears before the user is logged off.

In the Logoff Message box, type the message that appears during the logoff countdown. Click OK.

In the Display Properties dialog box, click Preview.

You see the Auto Logoff dialog box. It displays the logoff message and the countdown timer. Click Cancel.

Click OK.


As far as I could confirm, this does not apply to Home Edition.


If you cannot set up the above procedure, you can at least disable the "Fast User Switching" feature. (As you said that sometimes there are 3 or 4 accounts logged in, I assume it is turned on). With FUS turned off, when a user quits, the programs he/she is using shut down, freeing computer resources. It is not the ideal solution, but I think it will help a little, in case automatic logout is not possible.

Thanks lycorn,

This looks promising. It's not perfect ... I've got "Fast User Switching" turned on because my account has stuff running in the background most of the time, and it's an extremely convenient way to allow everyone else to log in and do their thing without messing me up ... but my initial testing shows that the screen saver doesn't kick in if the account has been "switched" out. Still, it solves part of the problem. I'll have to play with it a little more.

Thanks to all who replied.

snail,
Having the same problem. Finally found the solution. It's called NetLogoff. You can find it at download.com or [URL]http://www.ipworx.com/index.shtml[/URL] . Set it up like any screen saver in Display Properties. It works fine unless, of course, they change their screen saver.
Rick

[QUOTE=garo;14718]If you are interested in prime95 running all the time, install it as a service. This is done automatically when you click the "start at bootup" option and have administrator privileges.[/QUOTE]

As I reported in another thread my Prime95 Service on XP Home is hit-and-miss. Sometimes the service starts and sometimes it doesn't and I can't start it. It keeps reporting an error. Then a week or two later it starts working again and keeps working for a few weeks.

I know the service is not starting when Prime95 ends when I log off my account that I run it with.

Other than the screensaver suggestion, I don't think there's a built in way to do this, though it might save some login/logout time to just hit ctrl+alt+del and select the 'user' tab and log everyone else out from whatever account you're on.

If you're willing to spend $30, you could try third-party software [URL="http://www.winability.com/active-exit/"]http://www.winability.com/active-exit/[/URL].