Remote desktop defeating inactivity timeout

Question

Is there an easy way to prevent a Remote Desktop session from timing out due to inactivity, assuming no access to the terminal server timeout settings? Maybe something like automatically transmitting a mouse click or a key press every few minutes?

Answer 1

I suspect there are ways in software to do this but I found a really simple solution by accident years ago. Assuming your mouse is optical, placing it on a refractive surface such as a frosted glass coaster causes the mouse sensor to move the mouse by a few pixels at a time almost continuously.

I use this trick every day as I operate a remote recovery service and some portions of the service can lag for hours, I use this to keep the session active while I move onto other projects. I picked up a set of the coaster, 4 I think, for about ten bucks last time I added workstations and find it a simple technique. One warning though, if your mouse is wireless this will cause you to run through a lot of batteries so use rechargables.

Answer 2

I found this question searching on Google and one possible solution is to have a program that automatically moves your mouse every X seconds and does something (like click or press a key). Here are a couple of free solutions I found:

http://movemouse.codeplex.com/

http://www.murgee.com/auto-mouse-mover/

Answer 3

Here is another software option that I've used and it works well.

https://mousejiggler.codeplex.com/ Project Description Mouse Jiggler is a very simple piece of software whose sole function is to "fake" mouse input to Windows, and jiggle the mouse pointer back and forth.

Useful for avoiding screensavers or other things triggered by idle detection that, for whatever reason, you can't turn off any other way; or as a quick way to stop a screensaver activating during an installation or when monitoring a long operation without actually having to muck about with the screensaver settings.

Answer 4

Years later... try Targeted Caffeine. Like the normal Caffeinated, but you can send keystrokes to any window based on title / class.

https://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/caffeine/