WSControl 1.37

WSControl is a program that allows you to remote control computers on your network. I.e. you can execute commands that you could also type into Windows' "Run..." dialog box. Additionally there are the so called SysCmds. They start with "SysCmd_" followed by a mostly self-explaining command. With them you can execute complex commands that would be hard to or can't be executed by command line, i.e. close windows.
Me and friend wrote this program for the computer-room in my school which consists of 1 server and 16 workstations. When installing programs on all 16 machines we always had to step up to each machine and execute the command lines needed. So one night we decided to write a program that would run on all machines and that could receive commands from the server. We programmed all night and in the morning we had a program that was basically working. It was communicating through a file in a shared directory on the server. It was restricted to a maximum of 15 workstations though. We tried to break through this limitation using this file based communication but we failed. So we decided to use Windows' TCP/IP-communication functions in a library called WinSock. This allowed great speed improvements and much higher reliability. At this point I want to reference to Johnnies WinSock Tutorial which really helped us a lot. The next problem was to shutdown all computers 1 minute before the small break ended. Since we didn't want to do this ourselves we had to program a task scheduler. Here you could enter a time and a command-line to be executed at that time.
Of course the program didn't work perfectly from the beginning. We had to fix many bugs but since we used the program everyday they were tracked down quickly. Version 1.30 runs kindof stable but it has some difficulties if too many computers log on at once. Also I'm not planning to translate the program in close future, maybe someday I will.

Features:

• Executes any command lines on your network-PCs
• The server program on each workstation is only 7 kB
• Intuitive user interface (if you know some german)
• There are special SysCmds that allow you to execute special functions like closing windows
• The program is password protected
• You can send short messages to your network computers
• You can automate WSControl using the build-in task scheduler
• The command-line version can be used in batch-files
• The program doesn't slow down the network or the workstations

This is WSControl in logged-off state. The task scheduler is running but the program can only be used after you logged on via the "Optionen" menu.

This dialog shows up when you click "Vorgang" (Task)

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