ME3 with a headless box

[jesawyers]

Hello All,

 

I'm developing a small macro for a WinXP box, that will eventually be headless...no monitor, keyboard, or mouse hooked up.

 

When developing the macro, I was using a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. The macro ran just fine in this configuration.

 

However, when I make the box headless, the macro does not work correctly. In particular, the following code that is using WinZip...

 

Launch and Activate: "WINZIP32.EXE"

Wait For Window Title: "WinZip"

Text Type: <CTRLD>n<CTRLU>

Wait For Window Title: "New Archive"

Text Type: C:\Valve_Data\Zipped_Files\%T1%.ZIP<ENTER>

Wait For Window Title: "Add"

Text Type: C:\Valve_Data\bin\%T1%.bin<ENTER>

Wait For Window Title: "WinZip - "

Text Type: <SHIFTD>a<SHIFTU>

Wait For Window Title: "Add"

Text Type: C:\Valve_Data\bin\%T1%.DSC<ENTER>

Wait For Window Title: "WinZip - "

Text Type: <SHIFTD>a<SHIFTU>

Wait For Window Title: "Add"

Text Type: C:\Valve_Data\ASCII\%T1%.TAB<ENTER>

Wait For Window Title: "WinZip - "

Text Type: <ALTD><F4><ALTU>

Wait Window Lose Focus: "WinZip"

 

What ME is reporting is on the second line that the title "WinZip" did not appear in the time allotted (60 seconds). I've tried different commands to try to make this happen with no success. WinZip does launch and activate, but sometimes I get the "WinZip did not appear..." and then sometimes it will get to the "New Archive did not appear..." error.

 

Does anybody have any ideas on why this may be happening? The version of WinZip I'm running is 9.0 and is an official version not the trial.

 

Again as long as I have the monitor hooked up to the box everything works.

 

Thanks...John

[Cory]

I'm going to hazard a guess that if it's headless you're accessing it via remote control software like Remote Desktop or other application. The general rule is that ME will not 'see' anything when it's minimized or disconnected. This is because, well, nothing is happening. For RD you must not minimize the session window but rather window it. This allows you to open other applications. However if this is an animal which will be running unattended, in the middle of the night and without a RD session things are more difficult. Realistically you need to initiate and maintain a console session. That's the local session created when you would normally log in at the machine. In this case the computer doesn't realize no one is looking and maintains the normal user environment ME needs. One way to do this is to set the machine up to log a user in automatically when it starts up and then join that session using RD from a remote session. Or you can use a program like VNC which always interacts wit the console session. But the ice thing is that it's a service so you can actually log into the console session remotely when the machine boots.

[Rustywinger]

My hazarded guess is that the screen resolutuion might change in the absence of a detected monitor. That might throw off a macro that expects elements to be in certain positions if they dynamically react to the screen resolution.

[Cory]

Naw, they stay the same on the console session. And I almost never need to use a mouse move or click with my macros. There's almost always a way to do it with the keystroke or control.