windowspowershellvbscriptsendkeys

How to emulate keypress combination without activating Window using Win32 API

I would like to emulate Ctrl+Alt+L keypress combination (which a hidden process running in memory is listening for). So... I can't activate a GUI window that's not there (using traditional SendKeys).

I can't seem to find a single working script anywhere that can help me do this. The closest I found was the Keypress script below which seems to be limited to only a single character press (no key combinations).

https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/3qk9mc/keyboard_keypress_script/

Solution

  • This is a demonstration with CTRL+ESCAPE. Easy to modify for your needs. A list of keyboard codes is here: http://www.kbdedit.com/manual/low_level_vk_list.html

    But be careful while testing. If a key isn't properly released, strange effects can be happen!

    $keyboardEvent = Add-Type –memberDefinition @" 
    [DllImport("user32.dll")] 
    public static extern void keybd_event(byte bVk, byte bScan, uint dwFlags, UIntPtr dwExtraInfo);
"@ -name "keyboardEvent" -namespace Win32Functions –passThru
    
$key_down    = 0x00
$key_up      = 0x02
   
$vk_lcontrol = 0xA2
$vk_alt      = 0x12
$vk_l        = 0x4C
$vk_escape   = 0x1B
$vk_windows  = 0x5B
    
# Press CTRL+ESC => Same as Windows Key
[Win32Functions.keyboardEvent]::keybd_event([byte]$vk_lcontrol, [byte]0, [UInt32]$key_down, [UIntPtr]::Zero)
[Win32Functions.keyboardEvent]::keybd_event([byte]$vk_escape, [byte]0, [UInt32]$key_down, [UIntPtr]::Zero)
Start-Sleep 1
    
# Release CTRL+ESC 
[Win32Functions.keyboardEvent]::keybd_event([byte]$vk_lcontrol, [byte]0, [UInt32]$key_up, [UIntPtr]::Zero)
[Win32Functions.keyboardEvent]::keybd_event([byte]$vk_escape, [byte]0, [UInt32]$key_up, [UIntPtr]::Zero)
Start-Sleep 1