Running Test Complete in screen lock mode

I had the same problem and was advised that:





Test Complete will work only on state "user is logged in" and requires an interactive session on the machine.



The solution was to establish an RDP connection.



This may help:

See the "Running Tests via Remote Desktop"

article for details:

http://support.smartbear.com/viewarticle/19913/

Personally I would ideally prefer it to work whereby user is logged in or not and can lock their computers so that you can get test coverage whilst away from your computer, otherwise from what I can tell - we would require a dedicated machine to run tests based on scheduled tasks for user is logged on.

Hi Krushna,



Like the user cannot operate application if the screen is locked, TestComplete cannot do this either. Just because the OS does not provide UI for the user's desktop when the screen is locked.

The are no problems to execute the tests which do not interact with UI on the locked computers.

Hi Aneez,



> [...] I would ideally prefer it to work whereby user is logged in or not [...]

Just to clarify: as it was said, this is not a TestComplete problem, but generic behavior of OS: it does not create a desktop and does not create a GUI subsystem for it if there is no user logged on for the given session. So this is not TestComplete that cannot find GUI controls on the locked computer, but the physical absence of GUI for the application running in the session with the locked desktop. The result will be exactly the same for any other test automation tool - no other tool will be able to find GUI controls when desktop is locked.

Hi Krushna,



I think, you may need to try using the approaches mentioned in the "Running Tests on Locked Computers" help topic.

Hi Alexei,



Thanks for your reply.





Does that the best solution or optmization out of running automated tests is to Run Test Complete on a dedicated machine that is left logged in so your automated tests can get coverage of the application?





With Kind Regards,

AAN.

Hi Aneez,



Yes, you are correct.

Note, that such dedicated test machine can be (for security purposes) set up to run without monitor attached and be accessed and managed via Remote Desktop only.

Following the advice at http://support.smartbear.com/viewarticle/18731/ it is possible to minimize (or even close? - need to be double-checked) RDP window during the tests execution.