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Restarting ME after shutdown


patgenn123

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Hello all,

 

Is there a way of having ME automatically restart or a password to prevent ME from stopping? In other words, in Task manager, I could delete both Macedit.exe and MacExp.exe and Macro Express would stop. I either need to protect it from being shut down or I need it to restart again if it is shut down.

 

I would prefer a restart.

 

Any suggestions?

 

pat

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If Windows or some idiot with access to the PC wants to shut ME down there is nothing you can do as there are a variety of heinous options. Why would someone terminate the process when they can turn off the PC? What happens if some other program freezes the PC? The possibilities are endless. Did you have anything (anyone!) particular in mind?

 

The only thing I can think of is to monitor ME with another program. Check if ME is running every so often and if not start it. You may be able to do that in Scheduled Tasks (I never use it, all scheduled stuff by ME) or other macro programs. If I'm running my PC for weeks unattended and running complex, flaky macros, I use a 3rd party utility to do a forced reboot once or twice every day so that even if ME or anything else hangs up, it will be running the next day. Google may be of help in getting ideas.

 

Screensaver-style lockout programs would tend to inhibit many macros. Perhaps there are some lock utilities that reside in the Task Bar.

 

Even if ME restarts, it may need to know which macro was running. Every macro you plan to run in this scenario of saboteurs will have to register, say in a text file. When ME restarts, you will have to run a macro that runs on ME startup that goes to the text file, gets the name and runs the macro. Not a problem with scheduled macros unless you must re-run one that was in progress.

 

You need to have ME ignore errors so it keeps running as best possible (set in Options). No good having ME running but hung on an error.

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John,

 

To be honest with you, the reason why I want to do this is because I am creating a macro so that if a bad site(i.e. pornography) comes up, the macro will redirect it to another site, for example cnn.com.

 

Shutting it down won't be a problem because I could have macro express open up when the computer starts and will have the macro running upon start up. It's the shutdown during a Windows session that I want blocked OR RESTARTED. Also, I want the "suspend Macro Express" in the system tray to be blocked also. I wish these options were available. Plus, you would need a code, if one desires, to completely uninstall ME also.

 

Macro Express can market itself as a full fledged cyber nanny! Hey Insight, that's a great idea! You could market this in this way too!

 

What I wouldn't mind seeing is macro express be able to (without right clicking on Internet Explorer or any other browser) the ability to get the source code so I could parse through it so that bad words can be picked up from the HTML code just in case the windows Title is benign. Maybe I could mix AutoHotKey or AutoIt in with a macro, but I wish ME could do this. I am not too adept with writing long lines of code with AutoIt or Autohotkey yet, but if ME had this, it would be a snap!

 

Finally on a different note , it would be nice if ME gave us the ability to do 2 more things: transparent windows and to be able to write /grab text from invisible/hidden windows.

 

Pat

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An interesting project. Do you think that ME is in danger of being blocked? Is the intention to stop a user other than the "keyholder" from blocking ME? I've never had ME attacked and I've been through quite a few hostile sites - not that I frequent porn or anything, well, not on Sundays!

 

You don't have to show ME at all in the system tray.

 

Marketing anything with ME is of limited value since mxe files cannot be run on PCs without "..the Macro Express player" installed. Never seen a player myself. Must have bought the economy version.

 

There's a host of content policing programs out there. Most websites don't use the capability in the code to identify as safe for kids etc. If you search for anything remotely connected with women you will get results that include nudity etc that is not readily identifiable. "This is a picture of me and the wife" may be pornographic but impossible to identify as such.

 

You can use the page source (View, Source, Page Source depending on browser) to go through text but it's not convenient for the user. As you indicated you would need to parse the page but in an unobtrusive way.

 

AutoIt has quite a few IE related scripts in the Helpfile listing such as _IEDocReadHTML.au3 but then you have to program in AutoIt - not as much fun as ME. Neither seems big on non-IE but then browsers like Firefox have boatloads of add-ons and safe browsers written for them (or you can write yourself).

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John,

 

No, not in danger of being blocked. I am attempting to use ME to prevent unauthorized use while the computer is being used not from the the outside world(the big bad internet)

 

Do you have an Autoit script that runs every few seconds that checks to see if a Program like Macro Express is running and if it's not, then have AutoIt re-open it? What I could do is have ME run every few seconds to see if the AutoIt program is running and they could be checking on each other. I could also have ME check to see if the autoit program has been deleted and have ME recreate another one so it cannot be deleted.

 

The only thing left would be to find a way to have some program sense that Macro Express has been suspended. If so, then it would take over.

 

I want to find a solution for this using ME. It's a shame that these options cannot be customized like suspend or uninstall. This would make it airtight and everything then would depend on writing the code in ME.

 

Pat

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I don't have anything that fits the bill. You are getting into areas that can potentially be used for malware. Some viruses protect themselves by the method you described - multiple files checking on each other and recreating their buddies if they are deleted. Every time you delete one, it springs up again.

 

The fact you are using ME would indicate that you're not looking at shutting down MS! However, I would not post any code that would give someone else a helping hand or bad ideas. If I come across anything I'll PM you (as hopefully will anybody else with ideas).

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I am actually using it for my own use. I am trying to keep the kids from having any bad ideas as they enter into that stage of life and I don't want to pay for it if i don't have to.

 

There's some pretty good software out there for free like k-9, but oddly, it doesn't filter out things like youtube's content. That's insane. It's good, but not good enough.

 

 

 

Thanks!

 

pat

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For the reasons I commented your biggest hurdle would be to get something working effectively in blocking content. That comes way before effort on meddling control. Their most-likely reason for turning off your system is if it makes things too inconvenient. If it's just your kids, there are far easier ways of checking their behaviour. It could be simple things like writing the time or sequential numbers to a text file every 5 minutes while the macro is running. You could check later (or have a macro do it) to see if there were any gaps. That tells you far more about their mindset eg they want to see unsuitable content.

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I know I could have directly started the thread with the issue at hand, but I wanted to be subtle about it. I'm sorry.

 

I have been on the internet for a good 1.5 hours trying to find something free and easy to use. The best one is k-9, but it doesn't block objectionale material on Youtube.

 

I am kind of getting distraught about it because there's nothing out there that has high reviews. I've tried a few and they block websites they shouldn't be blocking etc.

 

ME would be perfect for this, but the creators of ME did not put a few safeguards in place for this type of requirement. It might be a little unique of a request, but I guess I can't expect everything. They have a great product. I just wish it was a hair more customizable to get this done. ME WOULD BE SO PERFECT for this.

 

Pat

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