Many issues

[sorgelig]

Hi!
Thanks for concept which potentially gives much better on-screen keyboard.

However provided method to replace OSK is unreliable because of a lot of issues:

1. admin elevate doesn't work. Scripts simply relaunch itself in endless loop. So all you see is endless re-spawning cmd window. Solution: launch cmd as admin and remove the part of script checking and re-launching the script.
2. Current Aya Neo registry has DWORD value starting with 0x86xxxxx, so this query: reg Query "HKLM\Hardware\Description\System\CentralProcessor\0" | find /i "x86" always true and thus choose 32bit framework instead of 64bit and of course later execution go wrong way. solution: add unconditional line set FrameWork=Framework64
3. registry change reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TabletTip\1.7 /t REG_DWORD /v EnableDesktopModeAutoInvoke /d 1 /f doesn't go to original place. It goes to some process-specific branch and thus doesn't work system wide. Solution: open regedit and add this manually.
4. osk.exe doesn't exists in system-wide \windows\system32\ folder. it exists in process specific substitution folder visible for process launching osk.exe. So replaced osk.exe in script isn't used by Aya Neo button and original osk.exe is launched instead. Solution: launch original osk.exe, then through task manager open containing folder, then through manipulation of taking ownership, adding permission, fight with windows antivirus blocks, replace osk.exe there manually.

Now it works ;) However button it seems bouncing a lot, so when i press it, it often open and immediately closes the keyboard. It's better to remove closing the keyboard by button. So button will only open the keyboard. Closing can be accomplished by pressing X on top right corner. Or may be add timeout to exclude bouncing.

I don't know which process bound to that hardware button. May be it would be better to redirect the button to TabTipProxy explicitly without using osk.exe, so at least it won't trigger windows protection.

[Lulech23]

Points 1 and 2 are consequences of using Batch. It's ideal for being open and also convenient to run, but it's hardly ideal as a scripting language.

I have found a way to automate running PowerShell scripts on secured systems and I'm currently working on porting ReplaceOSK to PowerShell. So both of these issues have already been solved in the next version (2.3, coming soon).

As for points 3 and 4, you're going to have to give examples of what you mean by "process specific", because the features you mentioned are indeed universal. I don't have an Aya Neo to experiment with (yet) but I do know the keyboard button just triggers the Win + Ctrl + O shortcut. There is no way to remap this without an always-on background service, so replacing osk.exe really is the preferable solution.

Lastly, if the keyboard is bouncing closed and open when you press the shortcut, you probably didn't get TabTipProxy, so you're on the fallback setup instead. This should really never be necessary, but happens on some systems due to limitations in Batch. So, that is also already solved in the PowerShell port. 😃 Stay tuned!

[birdybro]

I have found a way to automate running PowerShell scripts on secured systems and I'm currently working on porting ReplaceOSK to PowerShell. So both of these issues have already been solved in the next version (2.3, coming soon).

A method we've used at our place. First a batch script you run as administrator (set it with the flag to run as administrator in file properties):

REM Checks is system has PowerShell greater than 5.x by seeing if pwsh command is available. If it is, we launch using that instead of PowerShell 5.x. 
@echo off
cls
set powershellver=99
WHERE pwsh > NUL
IF %ERRORLEVEL% NEQ 0 (set powershellver='0') ELSE (set powershellver='1')
if %powershellver%=='1' goto :new
if %powershellver%=='0' goto :old
exit
:old
Echo Launching PowerShell 5...
Powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File "%~dp0app.ps1" > NUL
exit
:new
Echo Launching PowerShell 7...
pwsh -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File "%~dp0app.ps1" > NUL
exit

Then in powershell:

param([switch] $Force)
# Self-elevate the script if required
if (-Not ([Security.Principal.WindowsPrincipal] [Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent()).IsInRole([Security.Principal.WindowsBuiltInRole] 'Administrator')) {
    if ([int](Get-CimInstance -Class Win32_OperatingSystem | Select-Object -ExpandProperty BuildNumber) -ge 6000) {
        $CommandLine = "-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File `"" + $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Path + "`" " + $MyInvocation.UnboundArguments
        Start-Process -FilePath PowerShell.exe -Verb Runas -ArgumentList $CommandLine
        Exit
    }
}

This makes it so the batch file that is set to run as administrator will properly detect what powershell version and then decide which powershell version to open as administrator with a bypass of security rules. But the user still has to have local admin to do this. Anything that will require administrator privileges will necessarily need local admin to launch unless you find a security vulnerability that is new, of course. :P

[Lulech23]

Launching a PowerShell script from Batch itself is easy enough, but normally requires two separate files as your example does. ReplaceOSK now uses a PowerShell script with a Batch launcher built-in, so the end user just has one file to worry about. 🙂

[sorgelig]

about 3 and 4: Windows has application (ok, i wasn't correct by call it as process) isolation layer to solve different issues in shared folders and keep some features sandboxed for specific app only. Thus if one app will "look" into windows\system32 it will find some library or even exe (for example osk.exe) of one version, while other app will see other versions of libs/exe in windows\system32. So by replacing osk.exe you replace it for your app (or may be for some set of apps) but not system wide. The system process which invokes osk.exe doesn't see new link. It still uses old original osk.exe.
The same for registry. Some system sensitive registry branches are cloned to specific app and only this app will see the changes.

I'm sure at 100% i use TabTipProxy as i had to do many things manually due to issues above. More over, i replaced osk.exe by TabTipProxy manually by copy and rename it to osk.exe (not link).

[Lulech23]

Replacing osk.exe directly will trigger Windows AV. So that explains one further issue. (This is why ReplaceOSK uses a symlink instead.)

As for the rest, I'm guessing you're referring to WOW6432Node? There are two references to osk.exe, one for 64-bit apps and one for 32-bit apps running on 64-bit Windows. There is only one copy of osk.exe in Windows, however. The only way it'd get instanced in a sandbox is if you're using some additional program (maybe something preinstalled on the Aya Neo?).

[Lulech23]

#3 Please see the latest update--it should fix most if not all the issues mentioned here

[sorgelig]

Well, i don't know how to test new version since i've replaced OSK already. May be new users currently getting Aya Neo will test.

I didn't install anything on Aya Neo besides the Total Commander and NET Framework 4.8. So my experience is from "vanilla" Aya Neo setup. Probably windows config/version is quite different from founder edition. So may be that's why ReplaceOSK experience is quite different from that on video.

[Lulech23]

You can run ReplaceOSK again to uninstall the previous version, then run it again to install the latest version. TabTipProxy has changed, so there will be functional differences besides just the installer.