We have an ermbedded system running windows XPe. After startup we do a self test of some of the hardware. If the hardware is defective we want to change the entire screen to a single colour hiding everything that might otherwise be visible: taskbar, any open windows etc. And ideally we want to do this from a batch file, without installing any extra software. Is this possible?
Related
There are many users struggling with UAC prompts opening in background instead of foreground. Well, I want to do exactly the opposite, ie having the UAC prompt flash on the taskbar and waiting for my attention instead of dimming my whole screen and messing my workflow.
Here's my setup: I'm working on a Win7 x64 machine, and I placed this link in my Startup folder:
C:\CLUs\chp.exe "apps.bat"
chp.exe is an utility that loads batch files without showing the command prompt.
apps.bat calls several unelevated programs (easier to manage apps in this way rather than putting a bunch of links in Startup). The last line of such bat is
elevate chp "elevapps.bat"
elevate.exe is an utility that, as the name says, elevates whatever is called with issuing an UAC prompt. And, clearly, elevapps.bat contains another bunch of programs that require admin rights to start properly.
Now, for a number of reasons I'd like the UAC prompt to start minimized/in background. Ie, once I've logged in Windows, all I want to see is the taskbar containing the flashing icon of the UAC, but no dimmed screen.
Is this possible with batch files? All I know is that UAC "smartly" detects whether it is stealing focus or not and (doesn't) show up accordingly. And clearly during the startup there's nothing to steal focus from, so looks like I'm having no luck. However it also seems that badly coded software (namely not assigning HWNDs somewhere, see here and here) precisely produces this effect. Is there a way to reproduce this "bug" (I'd call it a feature, in my case) with some code in a batch file? Also using a third party utility would be fine, however I'm not a programmer.
I solved the problem by using winapiexec.exe, an utility that allows (as per site) to run WinAPI functions through command line parameters.
winapiexec shell32.dll#ShellExecuteW NULL "runas" "chp" "elevapps.bat" NULL 7
I am in need of writing a batch script, which will start "A" browser session at a certain location on the screen and at a certain size and display a locally stored and very simple HTML file. I am not picky about browser type. The html document is nothing fancy, no dynamic content. Just a scrolling marquee when there exists a file.
Is it possible to open any one of major browsers, that is available on win 7 platform, at a location (x,y coordinates in pixels) and at a certain size ? This will be used by an elderly person, who can close any open window by clicking the X sign on the right top corner but other thna that, quite computer illiterate and the screen used always occupied by other content with a bit of space available near the bottom, to scroll this message.
If it si possible, could you please tell me the syntax of the command to run in the batch file ?
This won't be possible in batch (the only options with the start command are Minimised/Maximised).
This will probably be possible in C# though. Even better, if you dont want the browser to be fancy like you said, you could easily make a browser in C#, and make it take a number of parameters which would adjust sign and postition. If all you need is for the user to observe a html document and then close the browser I would seriously recommend you learn some basic C# and make this, or post another question presenting you're conundrum tagged C#.
Mona
You can place your html content into an .hta file that will be handled by mshta.exe. This is a container for the web browser control, but running with the security of a desktop application. So, you can include the required code (javascript, vbscript or any other active scripting engine available on the machine) to access the window object and move / resize it as needed.
Here is the situation. The company I work for builds this piece of software in c that can make a Windows computer act a bit like a TV. Essentially, our piece of software is meant to be played full screen and content is displayed from the internet without the user having to ever touch the computer again.
The problem is that once in a while, the system brings up pop-ups like "Your Windows system is ready for an upgrade." or "Please renew your Norton subscription" etc. which the user has to periodically and manually remove.
Is there a way to display content full screen without being bothered by those warnings?
Yah, whether or not the development community agrees, Microsoft has several standards for when and why it might be acceptable to have exclusive use of the monitor.
The most official strategy is to use DirectX in exclusive mode. This is what games do, what windows media player does in full screen video with hardware acceleration enabled, etc... If your application is multimedia intensive (as suggested by TV like functionality), you should probably be using DirectX too. Besides giving you the exclusive display access it will also increase your applications performance while lowering the CPU load (as it will overload graphics work to the video card when possible).
If DirectX is not an option, there are a great number of hacks available that seem to all behave differently between various generations of windows operating systems. So you might have to be prepared to implement several techniques to cover each OS you plan to support.
One technique is to set your application as the currently running screensaver. A screensaver if really just an EXE renamed to SCR with certain command line switches it should support. But you can write your own application to be such a screensaver and a little launcher stub that sets it as the screensaver and launches it. Upon exit the application should return the original screensaver settings (perhaps the launcher waits for the process to exit so that it returns the settings in both graceful exits and any unplanned process terminations ie: app crash). I'm not sure if this behavior is consistent across platforms though, you'll have to test it.
Preventing other applications from creating window handles is truly a hack in my opinion and pretty bad one that I wouldn't appreciate as a customer of such software.
A constant BringWindowToTop() call to keep you in front is better (it doesn't break other software) but still a little hack-ish.
Catch window creation messages with a global hook. This way you can close or hide unwanted windows before they become visible.
EDIT: If you definitely want to avoid hooks, then you can call a function periodically, which puts your window to the top of the z-stack.
You could disable system updates http://support.microsoft.com/kb/901037 and remove the norton malware.
You could also connect a second screen so that the bubbles appear in the the first monitor.
Or you rewrite it for linux or windows ce.
One final option is to install software that reconfigures your os into a kiosk http://shop.inteset.com/Products/9-securelockdown.aspx
If you don't need keyboard or mouse input, how about running your application as a screensaver?
A lot of thoses messages are trigged/managed by Windows Explorer.
Just replace it with your dummy c#/winform.
By changing the registry value
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"Shell"="Explorer.exe"
You can specify virtually any exe as an alternative to explorer.exe
That's the way all windows based (embedded) system (ATM & co) do.
There's still few adjustment (disable services you dont need / dr watson & others), and of course, you'll want to keep a "restart explorer.exe" backdoor.
But that's a good start
I have a WPF application that is designed for a touchscreen kiosk. Users will not have access to a keyboard or mouse. The application runs fine when started normally from the program icon in windows. However, when it is set up to run automatically at startup (by replacing the Windows shell using a registry key), the application does not function properly.
The application reads an XML file that lists available videos, then displays buttons to show the videos. When run in "kiosk mode," it does not seem to have access to the files in its media directory (the XML file and presumably the videos as well). I suspect that because the application is running in place of the windows explorer, it is missing resources it needs for file access that are normally loaded by windows explorer.
I have not been able to find any info on this - there is plenty of info on how to get an app to run at startup, but not much on how to make sure it will actually function in that environment. The PC is running Windows 7 Professional.
Is my assumption about the problem correct, or is it likely something else (e.g. permissions - we checked the permissions, but maybe they operate differently when you replace the windows shell?) If it is because needed resources are not loaded, does anyone have pointers on how to make sure my app loads them?
Perhaps you have file access occurring via a file dialog? This might explain a bit further. What is the minimum functionality needed to create Shell Replacement for Windows?
because you have stopped windows default running explorer.exe , your program can not get access to default xml directory therefore you should specify the complete path for example like below:
stream = File.Open(#"C:\x86\Debug\xml.xml", FileMode.OpenOrCreate);
I'm not sure if this is technically a Kiosk, but it's basically the same idea. I have a program that runs full screen all the time from boot to shutdown to control a machine that the computer is hooked to.
Right now I just have a shortcut to the exe in the Startup folder so it starts when the system boots up and logs in. Is there any better way to do this? I'd really like the user to never see the Windows environment (just the windows loading progress bar on boot) if at all possible, but I'm guessing that's not possible.
Just thought I'd ask and see if there is a better way to do this than putting it in the startup folder?
The best option is to use Windows Embedded. This gives you much more control over the shell, and what is run and installed with the system.
If you have to do this with a consumer OS, you can try to bypass the login prompts to auto-login your user, and have your program setup in the registry to startup. Disable any other services you don't need. That will minimize the time the shell is displayed (but it's very difficult to remove it).