Hey Guys,
I created this small and very simple java program which Act's as Windows Shell. Basically, my concept behind this was to first load the FrontEnd and when the FE has finished loading, start the Explorer Shell to retain rest of the system integrety such as wireless, cpuidle, or other software some of you may be using. Well, this is what I have done.
as a note, for anyone who has a Java (Jar) -> Exe converter that does not depend on special deployment packages, please feel free to convert this to an exe and post it up.
Install procedure:
1. If you don't already have install Java Runtime Environment v1.5, get it here: JRE 1.5.0
2. Download the Zip. Put the Jar file anywere, I personally put it in C:\
3. put the ini file into the users directory (ie. C:\Documents and settings\carputer_user )
4. edit the INI file. There are 4 Settings.
- First is FE. this is the location of the executable for your front end of choice.
- FE_CWD that is the directory of which your front end exists. more known as the current working directory
- SHELL. you can prolly leave the default, this is the windows shell to start up after the fe has finished loading
- SHELL_TIMEOUT. This is, in the number of seconds, my program should wait before starting execution of the shell. A good value for most installs will prolly be around the 30s mark.
5. logon onto your carputers default startup user.
6. And final step. go to start -> run -> regedit
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WinLogon
7. if it doesn't already exist, create a new string key called 'Shell".
as the value for shell assuming your put the JAR file in C:\ then
'java -jar c:\DaRacerzStartz.jar'
reboot and enjoy. if there are any problems, execution will fail. to retain the explorer shell, just do an alt control delete and run explorer and that'll give you back ability to make any changes you need to.
Note: If you are testing this program by just double click on the Jar file, then the INI file must be present in the same directory as the JAR file.
hope you like it as i do, cause i must say, i shaved off a good 10 seconds cause of all the junk i have in the start up menu.
as far as future version, i don't plan on maintaining this, but willl fix any critical issues that come about. my main reason for doing this was to show an example that this is possible and to show the advantage so that fe makers will start embedded such support into their appz.
mark
Mark
Website: http://www.greenpowerenthusiast.com/
Car'Puter Project
- Xenarc 700TSV
- MSI RS482M-IL Mobo + AMD Turion MT-32 (25W)
- 1x 256MB Corsair XMMS DDR400
- M2-ATX
- Belkin 802.11G W-Nic
- Garmin 15H GPS
- WinXP SP2 (NLited)
it may be better to do this with a batch file. MSFT has a "sleep" command in the 2003 Resource Kit (or you could write your own C command line program if you don't feel like downloading the whole RK). That way you don't need to have the JRE installed (and don't need to start up a Java program at boot up). It would look like so:
"path_to_front_end" (<--- in quotes in case there are spaces in the path such as Program Files, etc.)
sleep SHELL_TIMEOUT
explorer
The problem that I see is that the JRE takes a few seconds and some precious memmory to run. So I think that a batch file would be the better route to go here.
Excellant Idea, keep it rolling your onto something that could probably help a bunch of others.
Progress [I will seriously never be done!]
Via EPIA MII
512MB RAM
OEM GPS (embedded)
nLite WinXP pro on
1GB Extreme III CF card
Carnetix 1260 startup/ DC-DC regulator
Software: Still, re-Writing my existing front end in .Net
The problem with that is some apps like Centrafuse leave the command line hanging not allowing further execution. So this seizes(sp??) execution of explorer until Centrafuse (in this case) is exited. Atleast thats what happened in my limited testing using the batch file. What I am trying to do is load explorer shell in parallel to the FE, but after a time delay."path_to_front_end" (<--- in quotes in case there are spaces in the path such as Program Files, etc.)
sleep SHELL_TIMEOUT
explorer
If I do anything, I'll end up porting over to 'c' so no runtime environment is necessary. but right now I'm trying to see if its possible to move up execution earlier on into the winlogon procedure which i deem is possible, granted a lot of testing will be needed and playing around will be needed cause its hard to come about any really detailed documentation on the winlogon procedure and commands which are controllable via registry.
Mark
Website: http://www.greenpowerenthusiast.com/
Car'Puter Project
- Xenarc 700TSV
- MSI RS482M-IL Mobo + AMD Turion MT-32 (25W)
- 1x 256MB Corsair XMMS DDR400
- M2-ATX
- Belkin 802.11G W-Nic
- Garmin 15H GPS
- WinXP SP2 (NLited)
What if you called the FE via the start command in the batch. I'm kinda sleepy, but IIRC that will spawn it as a seperate process allowing the batch to proceed to the next line.
Code:start <path to FE exec> sleep <x> explorer..
Posting Permissions
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks