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Sunday, May 9, 2010

Keeping Citrix sessions alive with sendkeys

I use the following script as a way of keeping my Citrix session alive to thwart security guys and their over-aggressive timeouts.

Normally I don't like to use sendkeys, but this seemed like the perfect way to trick ica into thinking keys were being pressed...

PowerShell and VBScript versions below.



#
# Find the wfica.exe process and poke keystrokes at it, preventing a Citrix session from timing out
# Be careful what you have open and what keystrokes you poke

[System.Object[]]$processes = get-process | where {$_.ProcessName -eq "wfica32.exe"}
if ($processes.count -ge 1) { $process = $processes[0] }

if ($process -is [System.Diagnostics.Process])
{
  $processes | format-list -property *

  for (;;)
  {
    [void] [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("'Microsoft.VisualBasic")

    [Microsoft.VisualBasic.Interaction]::AppActivate($process.Id)
    start-sleep -seconds 1

    [void] [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("'System.Windows.Forms")
    [System.Windows.Forms.SendKeys]::SendWait("1")
    start-sleep -seconds 240
  }

}





Set objWshShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")

strProcessName = "wfica32.exe"

intProcessID = 0
Call FindProcessID(strProcessName, intProcessID)

if (intProcessID > 0) Then
 wscript.echo "Found process ID: " & intProcessID

 Do 
  objWshShell.AppActivate(intProcessID)
  WScript.Sleep 1000
  objWshShell.SendKeys "1"
  WScript.Sleep 240000
 Loop

End If


Function FindProcessID(ByRef strProcessName, ByRef intProcessID)

 strQuery = "Select * from Win32_Process Where Name = '" & strProcessName & "'" ' WQL query string looking for the specified process

 Set objNameSpace = GetObject("winmgmts://./root/cimv2")    ' The cimv2 namespace of the local machine

 FindProcessID = vbFalse
 Set objProcessSet = objNameSpace.ExecQuery(strQuery)     ' Execute the query
 For Each objProcess in objProcessSet      ' For each process in the set, ordered by oldest to newest
  intProcessID = objProcess.ProcessID
  WScript.Echo "Found process, ID: " & intProcessID
  WScript.Echo objProcess.Name & ", " & intProcessID & ", " & objProcess.CreationDate & ", " & objProcess.CommandLine & ", " & objProcess.Priority & ", " & objProcess.WorkingSetSize & ", " & objProcess.PageFileUsage
  FindProcessID = vbTrue
 Next

 Set objNameSpace = Nothing : Set objProcessSet = Nothing : Set objProcess = Nothing
End Function


Wayne's World of IT (WWoIT), Copyright 2010 Wayne Martin. 

6 comments:

EastAfricanTrypod said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
EastAfricanTrypod said...

Can't get the Sendkey part to work. Doesn't seem to be refreshing my sessions. Any suggestions?

digital id said...

I need one more suggestion on this You said keeping Citrix session alive to thwart security guys and their over-aggressive timeouts.Is this the best way to achieve this does it have some weakness depending on which we can take decision.Can you suggest some alternate to this

EastAfricanTrypod said...

I have been trying this script at work while several apps and browsers were open through a Citrix connection but the timeout still happens. If you could make any suggestions or what to look for while I'm trying to do research on this would be much appreciated.

Anonymous said...

The sendkeys is working, but it is not preventing the time out.

escort job for girls in delhi said...

Thanks for shareing this comment


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About Me

I’ve worked in IT for over 20 years, and I know just about enough to realise that I don’t know very much.