Deleting *.bak Files When the Computer Turns Idle (VBS)

A similar thread from the Technet Forums:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ITCG/thread/2991aa59-07c6-413e-8bf0-9ffa2bd8f0d3

Here is a script that deletes all *.bak files on a computer's D: drive when the computer becomes idle after 10 minutes.



There is actually a trick behind this script. Using a script to check whether a computer is idle is not really straightforward, but rather relatively complicated (read my lips, I don't know how to do it). I made use of the Screen Saver timeout property via a registry hack, setting it to trigger after 10 minutes (600 seconds) via the sub procedure SetScrSvrTime():



The script checks if the screen saver process is running (it is implied that in this example, the computer is configured with the "Mystify.scr" screen saver). A connection to the WMI service on the local computer is made and an event notification query which fetches within 20 seconds a list of running processes:



The Do-While loop processes the information gathered from this query and checks for the screen saver "Mystify.scr" process. If found, it goes to another loop where a call to the DelFiles(strDrv) sub procedure is launched (strDrv is the parameter passed to the sub procedure which is actually the drive where the *.bak files are going to be deleted). This sub procedure then recursively checks and deletes all *.bak files found:



This script can be further customize to accomplish other things when the computer goes idle. For example, you may want to send out notification, defrag the hard disk, run a back-up and so on. The possibilities are endless, let your imagination loose!

For those interested to have a copy of this script, please drop this post a comment.