I am running 1.8.3 on Windows Vista RC1. I only have 'Rest Break' enabled with the default settings, and no networking enabled.


For the past several months Workrave has worked well, with one problem, where the countdown timer on Workrave seems to stop and start at random, regardless of mouse or keyboard input. This problem seems to be caused by the privileges required by certain applications, requiring those applications to be executed with Administrator privileges. Consequently, Workrave cannot detect keyboard or mouse activity when those programs are receiving input.

To reproduce: right click on your notepad shortcut, run as administrator, type some stuff, move your mouse around, and notice the timer has stopped after the first few seconds.


I first noticed this issue when using firefox pre-releases. Restarting to apply updates to firefox, the updater.exe requires consent, launches with admin privileges, applies the nightly to FF, and then goes ahead and launches Firefox -- with Administrator privileges, as it turns out. My workrave timer had stopped whenever I was using Firefox (now fixed).

Maybe someone else here has encountered an unexplainable problem where the workrave timer just stops and starts regardless of input, and this privilege issue could be why.


Thanks,

Ray

I made some changes to the way Workrave intercepts keyboard events. You might one to try a recent nighly build:

http://www.workrave.org/download/snapshots/

Thank you for your reply. I found out that the type of incompatibility I wrote about has to do with Vista's <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/vishalsi/archive/2006/11/30/what-is-user-interface-privilege-isolation-uipi-on-vista.aspx" title="What is User Interface Privilege Isolation (UIPI) on Vista">User Interface Privilege Isolation (UIPI)</a>. And even if I were to set a software restriction policy forcing Firefox (or any other program) to run as a "basic user," the program would still be assigned a high integrity level if it was launched with the Administrator token.

So I would be more correct to say Workrave 1.8.3 has a problem communicating on the desktop with a program that is not assigned the same integrity level as Workrave.

I am now running 1.8.4 on Vista Business (retail). I have not noticed a similar problem. Although now I have a problem that I didn't have before, already reported as bug #587:
<a href="show_bug.cgi?id=587">Vista: Workrave not modal / coming to front</a>

I have always had bug #464, where the timer doesn't reset:
<a href="show_bug.cgi?id=464">Timer does not restart following reboot</a>

Workrave is very helpful despite any incompatibility. Thank you.


-Ray