Fast User switching mod

[Shovel]

Oooh, I'm feeling advernturous tonight.

Those sharing computers with minions.. I mean family members.. will be family with Fast User switching. It's the thingy that lets you stay logged in while someone else uses the computer.

It is, however, flawed. My sister never logs out, and leaves all manner of crap running. Mum comes along and Alice is running so much rubbish that Word has a delay when typing in letters. Now, Mum is not computer literate enough to faff with the Task Manager and force Alice to log off, so I'm after something cleverer.

What I want is this: When a user tries to Switch (as I shall refer to it from now on), I want to run a quick memory and average CPU usage check on all that user's processes - ensuring that they don't leave the computer crippled when they wander off to do something else. If they're over the limit, then they get told to shut something off, or fully log out instead.

The question, therefore is this: Is it possible to do it? If so, how? And with what? Has anyone ever done something similar? Am I a genious? Or insane?

Thanks for any ideas.

 

[Teren]

just turn off the fast user switching
and you wont have to sufer the crap they run, but you'll have to log out to

 

[Shovel]

That's the problem, my family have severe objections to the length of time it takes to log in and out, and Switching is very useful if one family member wants to check email and bugger off again - or if I have something gigantic downloading and it needs to be left running.

Turning it off isn't really an option I'm afraid.

 

[Xavier]

I'd just be realistic about it mate, the two options are fast user switching, with all of the associated performance hits, or no fast user switching... you can faff around inbetween but if it was easy to implement I'm pretty sure MS wouldn't have ignored the opportunity. What you're really after is a subset of Vanderpool Technology, which Intel aren't planning to introduce into hardware before late 2005 at this rate.

 

[fatbusinessman]

How about just prodding your sister until she gets the message that she shouldn't leave lots of stuff open?

 

[Xavier]

or use one of the many monitoring apps out there that will kill any apps she opens over a specified number...

5 apps open... fine, open a sixth and the first gets shut down heheh

 

[Shovel]

Oh right? What such apps are these?

 

[xane]

If you find the application executable you might be able to set properties on it that disable it when it goes into the background, worth a try.

You'll probably find its a couple of lame apps that cause all the problems.