ScreensaverStopper: stop activating Windows screensaver by sending F24 often

Its already built into Windows. You can use Presentation Settings: Windows Mobility Center -> Presentation Settings -> turn on (or "presentationsettings /start") This works even if you cannot run custom applications

This is how security is counterproductive.

Our security team when asked how quickly the lock should happen replied 3 to 5 seconds. Anything beyond that is a risk.

When asked about a reasonable duration, the CISO said 20 minutes, to cover the "shit I forgot to lock and I am on the road back home".

I wrote something along these lines several years ago that achieved a similar goal by pretending to play video. It worked on Windows 7 circa 2014. Not sure if it still works. Its here if anyone is interested: https://hastebin.com/onofajeduk.bash

Edit: yeah, looks like the docs explicitly say this doesn't prevent the screen saver. Maybe my old IT department was doing something like putting the the screen to sleep, which this prevented?

Good old creative use of SendInput(). Another example is taking screenshots by sending the Print Screen key, which is even documented on MSDN: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winuser/n...

Is there any software outside of point-of-sale terminals that would actually normally use the F24 key?

Why not initialize ip outside of the loop since the value is not required to change inside?