Troubleshooting
A lot of users ask if a recent upgrade to Windows 11 could be the cause of their issue, although so far this has yet to be the case. The .NET Framework 4.7.2 and low-level Windows API's required by Move Mouse are available across all supported versions of Windows, and therefore it is unlikely that Windows 11 is the problem.
The very first thing I would suggest if Move Mouse isn't behaving would be to enable logging.
Enabling the system tray notifications can be useful to determine why Move Mouse may have unexpectedly stopped or started.
By far the most common complaint I get from users is "Move Mouse is running, but my computer still went to sleep.".
A session typically goes to sleep once the idle time has reached a certain threshold. Move Mouse prevents this from happening by simulating mouse moves or clicks to interrupt the session idle time. If you find the your session is still going to sleep even though Move Mouse is running, monitoring your idle time will help you determine if Move Mouse is working as expected.
I have developed a PowerShell script to help you do this.
- Launch a new Windows PowerShell console.
- Script execution in PowerShell is Restricted by default. Run the following command that will set your execution policy to RemoteSigned, and allow you to run the script that monitors your idle time.
Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope:CurrentUser- Create a variable that will define a temporary path for the downloaded script.
$ScriptPath = (Join-Path -Path:$env:TEMP -ChildPath:"Watch Idle Time.ps1")- Download the Watch Idle Time.ps1 script.
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri:"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sw3103/movemouse/master/Utils/Watch%20Idle%20TIme.ps1" -OutFile:$ScriptPath- Execute the script.
& $ScriptPathYou should now be able to see your last input and idle time, which will automatically update when user input is detected.
ℹ️ This screenshot was taken from a Windows 11 workstation, and may look slightly different on other versions of Windows.
If you leave the Windows PowerShell console open in the background whilst Move Mouse is running, you should hopefully see the idle time reset when your Actions are executed.
If you would like to reset Move Mouse to default settings, you can do this be deleting or renaming the Settings.xml file. Make sure you exit Move Mouse before doing so.
If an application which has been opened in the Administrator or another user's context is in the foreground, then the Actions that are being executed may not reset the system idle time, and eventually allow the session to become idle. This is because Windows is essentially preventing an application (Move Mouse) running in the logged-on user's context from interacting with applications in a different session.
Version 4.16.3 will detect this and show the following warning in the logs.
[WRN] PerformActions Your system idle time has not been reset which may result in session timeout due to lack of user activity. Please refer to the Troubleshooting section in the Wiki for further assistance (https://github.com/sw3103/movemouse/wiki/Troubleshooting).
There are two possible workarounds in this scenario:
- Launch Move Mouse in the same Administrator/alternate user's context as the application that will be in the foreground.
- Use the Activate Application Action to bring an application into the foreground that is running in the logged-on user's context.
Some users have experienced a bug in the NVIDIA Experience software which is causing the idle time to constantly reset to 0.
This could cause anything that is reliant on the system idle time, such as screen savers, Move Mouse, etc. to falsely detect user activity when there is none.
Even though this thread is quite old now, I still get users contacting me with this issue.
When all else fails, please feel free to contact me with any issues or questions you might have. Please be sure to attach your Settings.xml and Move Mouse.log files which will greatly improve my chances of helping you.