help with my POS overlay

I'm about to lose my mind. I'm trying to make a touchscreen overlay for our crappy POS software at work. It is a simple DOS program. I had built an autohotkey script and gui but I just didn't like the look and lack of advanced menus. All I want is to replicate the CONTROLSEND ability of autohotkey. I tried the autohotkey.dll but I have no idea how to add it to my project. I was hoping VB2010 had something built in that can send a string of keystrokes to the DOS program underneath.

I have searched all sorts of forum posts for a SIMPLE snippet of code. Seems anyone seeking this is out for nefarious purposes though, and little help is offered. If you worry about this please PM me so I can prove to you my good intentions.

Let me repeat, all I want is a simple snippet of code that when a button is pushed, a specific string (characters and function keys) is sent to a specific out of focus dos box.

BUMP

I have been googling this subject for weeks now. I wanted to clarify my project in case anyone doesn't understand.

I have a DOS based Point of Sale at work. I wanted to make a visual basic overlay for it so my staff won't have to memorize every product number (SKU), and make tracking details of food orders a lot easier.

For example, if someone just ordered a drink, and you pushed the fountain drink button, it would send to the DOS POS (running in the background) "10002 [ENTER][ENTER][ENTER][ENTER]"

I get the feeling that my question goes unanswered everywhere due to the typically bad-sounding nature of people who want to send keystrokes to background applications. Anyone who can help, I would send you screen-shots of my work setup so you know my purpose is legitimate.

I can code the basic menus and procedures in VB easily, but the use of DLLs is beyond me. I am begging the community for some help in this! I know I am owed nothing but I would be eternally grateful.

Have you had a look at the SendKeys class? If it doesn't work, you'll have to try interop with API methods. I'm not super-familiar with this.

SendKeys will only send input to the application with input focus; this is typically the foreground application, so you'll have to make sure that the DOS application is in that state when you try to send keys. It may not be easily doable; I've never seen a discussion about simulating input end well without a good bit of pain and suffering first.