Question

i would like to have program a timer that will count the seconds during which there is mouse movement or any keyboard movement.

the point of this application is to record the amount of time an employee has been using the computer (does not matter what purpose or application it has been in use for)

i would like to do this in vb.net for winforms

Answer 1

I do exactly this using P/Invoke to talk to the GetLastInputInfo API.

Edit: Here’s a complete VB.Net program to display the number of milliseconds since the last input event, system-wide. It sleeps for a second before getting the information, so it reports a time of around a thousand milliseconds, assuming you use the mouse or keyboard to run it. 🙂

Imports System.Runtime.InteropServices

Module Module1
    <StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)> _
        Public Structure LASTINPUTINFO
        Public Shared ReadOnly SizeOf As Integer = Marshal.SizeOf(GetType(LASTINPUTINFO))
        <MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)> _
        Public cbSize As Integer
        <MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)> _
        Public dwTime As Integer
    End Structure

    <DllImport("user32.dll")> _
    Public Function GetLastInputInfo(ByRef plii As LASTINPUTINFO) As Boolean
    End Function

    Sub Main()
        Dim lii As New LASTINPUTINFO()
        lii.cbSize = LASTINPUTINFO.SizeOf
        lii.dwTime = 0
        System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1000)
        GetLastInputInfo(lii)
        MsgBox((Environment.TickCount - lii.dwTime).ToString)
    End Sub
End Module