WM5, TT5 and screen lock/password

gregh

Unfortunately it appears my company can now force a screen lock/simple PIN onto my PDA via Windows Media 5.

One downside of this is that when I'm driving using TT5 the PIN prompt pops up every 10 minutes.

Does anyone know a workaround or a fix for this?

I guess I need to find something like the old "keep alive" timers used years ago to stop modem connections dropping etc etc.

regards,

greg

nleaney · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 06, 2006 Posts: 20

I've raised exactly the same issue with TT support.

I'm fortunate enough to work for a vendor of PPC devices and got a pre-prod version of one recently that exhibited just this problem.

Initially TT said that it was down to the implementation on the device but they have now accepted that this is a wider issue.

It's worth noting that the policy that your subject to is delivered via the Messaging and Security Feature Pack for WM5 and Exchange 2003 SP2. You would have exactly the same problem if you set a PIN and timeout manually. The difference is when it's set by policy, you can't disable it again Sad

nleaney · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 06, 2006 Posts: 20

As a follow up to this, how many people are running TT5 and WM5 and how many people have seen this issue before?

TT support are suggesting that this isn't their problem as it's down to policy. My findings are that this issue would arise if the pin and lockout settings were made manually by a wm5 user as well as those of us that have these settings enforced by policy.

Microsoft indicated to me that there are API calls that TT could use to prevent the device from locking.

On a separate but related topic, WM5 supports the use of soft keys (similar to the 2 buttons you often see at the bottom of the TT screen) but TT haven't enabled there use. Anyone noticed any other WM5 enhancements that TT5 could be using but are not?

carlwi · Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2006 7:33 pm Post subject:

I can confirm that i've had this behaviour on my Wizard (MDA Vario) since upgrading the rom to AKU2.

C.

lbendlin · Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2006 7:11 pm Post subject:

confirmed for the HTC Universal with latest ROM. It's not a TomTom only problem though, all programs are affected. (Hmm - anyone tried with Windows Media Player or TCPMP?)

It seems like a Microsoft problem. They seem to have discontinued the previous leniency when it came to accept virtual keypresses (to keep the OS thinking the device is used), and seem to now need other ways for applications to signal the "busy, don't lock" status.

Maybe that's something to ask on the Windows Mobile Blog site
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nleaney · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 06, 2006 Posts: 20

The answer I got from a contact at MS was as follows:

"There is no way of stopping the password screen from displaying once the device has gone into suspend power mode. What most apps do is stop the device from going into suspend mode by using one of a number of techniques.

Older apps send keystrokes at regular intervals to simulate user interaction, but that’s not the best route as the user can change the timeout values and override the apps behaviour.

The recommended way of doing this is to use the SystemIdleTimerReset call after calculating the lowest timeout value set in the system.

See this MSDN article:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/guide_ppc/html/ppc_programming_pocket_pc_2002_lfyy.asp"

For the record, I have tried WMP10 and it is also affected.

lbendlin · Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 6:13 pm Post subject:

We're not talking about Suspend mode here - Standby and Lock are two different things.... I think MS have just shot themselves in the foot...
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nleaney · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 06, 2006 Posts: 20

I've suggested that some MS folks might like to look at this thread Wink

lbendlin · Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 10:48 pm Post subject:

yes please. We have similar threads in other forums for other programs (notably Navigon) that are hitting the same issue.
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weatheryoko · Occasional Visitor Joined: Sep 20, 2005 Posts: 14

Any update on this? Thanks.
Justin

jdee · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 21, 2005 Posts: 22

I'm not sure Microsoft will change this. Corporate security policy makers may not want it.

Would the Exchange administrator be happy if the device is allowed to run any application that doesn't require the user to be physically present? I don't think so as that would mean leaving corporate data vulnerable.

lbendlin · Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2006 8:44 pm Post subject:

yes, it's a nice little dilemma.

The only thing navigation programs can do is "press keys" more vigorously than they already used to do fighting with the power save feature.
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nleaney · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 06, 2006 Posts: 20

I have found it may possible to 'work around' this issue through judicious use of a registry editor!

The reg key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Comm\Security\Policy\LASSD\AE\{50C13377-C66D-400C-889E-C316FC4AB374}\AEFrequencyType

determines whether the user can change the length of timeout or not.
A value of 1 indicates that the timeout is locked, a value of 0 allows the user to dtermine their own timeout length.

Of course, modifying the registry is a dangerous activity if you don;t know what you're doing. It can also be a tricky exercise as many OEMs lock the registry down to prevent unuthorized access. I had to apply a registry unlock before I could make these changes. YMMV

Finally, your exchaneg administrator will specify a frequency at which the device policy is refreshed. If you're still receiving email over Server ActiveSync this policy will relock your device periodically.

I'm happy with this approach though since I turn off email delivery when I'm driving so the policy won't refresh my device until I re-enable it.

I hope to wrap up the registry changes etc. into a small VB App if I can ever work out the changes that have been made to the development environment in Visual Studio 2005!

HTH

weatheryoko · Occasional Visitor Joined: Sep 20, 2005 Posts: 14

You can find a solution here:

http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=51293

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