I'm confused. Do you want your steam link to unlock windows or do you want windows to unlock/wake your steam link?

Originally posted by WORM:

I'm confused. Do you want your steam link to unlock windows or do you want windows to unlock/wake your steam link?

The former. At the moment if I forget to proper terminate an RDP session I have to go back and unlock my pc for the Steam Link, it would be awesome to be able to manage that from the Steam Link itself

The linked code on launchpad uses native Windows functions to remotely install a service that does the unlocking. That code could potentially be run on a steam link directly using wine, but that would be overkill and potentially hard to get working.

The service there to do the unlocking could likely still be used in combination with WinRM. There is a open source python WinRM library that could potentially be used on the Steam Link: https://github.com/diyan/pywinrm

Even this may be overkill. It may be possible to do what is needed through ssh to your windows machine. The latest update to Windows 10 includes ssh and/or you could install ssh onto any Window machine yourself. Once ssh is installed on your desktop, you could use a script that ssh's to your Windows machine and activates the service code you have linked.

I myself find it kind of silly you have to have your machine unlocked in order to connect to it... and was wishing for something like this....

Reading through the explanation on codeproject, the thing that sticks out to me is this: "I haven't tested this on Vista". The process coded here may not even work on modern versions of Windows. It looks very hacky to me.

After more investigation, it seems the proper way to do this is to create a new 'ICredentialProvider' for Windows that listens for some remote command to unlock. See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32188454/credential-provider-usage-scenario-cpus-unlock-workstation-removed-from-windows

The information at that link is still speculative. I have previously altered the credential provider on my install of Windows for "panic password" ability ( making a dummy password shutdown the machine and/or wipe critical data ). Using a custom credential provider basically lets you alter what happens when the machine is locked and you need to login. I used a pre-created credential provider with hooks though; something would need to be written from scratch to support remote unlocking.

Another possible method would be to install VNC on the windows machine, and to install a VNC client on the steam link. If I recall correctly some VNC software can automatically unlock the machine. I am not sure through what mechanism that is done but that could be worth investigating.