help with mamewah running at XP start up as shell

[emopants92]

I have gone into regedit and edited "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\IniFileMapping\system.ini\boot" the string Shell to my mamewah.exe location but every time it starts it just shows up with nothing but a my documents window open?

[Turnarcades]

You must have either typed something wrong with the mamewah.exe location or you've set something else up wrong in Windows. Check your 'startup' folder from the start menu and ensure you've got nothing in there.

[Ginsu Victim]

Look up InstantSheller. It makes things easier.

[emopants92]

Thanks for the quick replay, i was fiddling with it for the past couple of hours. I re-follwed the directs at hiding windows on the byoac wiki. And did the 2 accounts one arcade and one called extra. Now the computer only boots up and goes directly into an account called administrator and cant get back into my arcade account to edit the registry to see if i miss spelled something again or not. So basically im going to delete my arcade account and used the one called extra because it makes no difference because my mame and mamwah is on my c: drive. The only issue is trying to get it to boot in the shell any other tips or something im missing? and instant sheller gives me error because im running it on a motherboard from 1999 (i think or 2000) and i upgraded the processor and running windows xp. I get some net. framework error or something, i can get the whole error if you want to help me get the instant sheller working. Thanks for the help!

[severdhed]

well, where to begin...

when you go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\IniFileMapping\system.ini\boot

and change the shell value, you do not point directly to your front end there..you point it to which registry key to check...originally it should have said:

SYS:Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

and to do it properly according to the wiki, you should change the first 3 characters to USR to make it:

USR:Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon


then, go to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
find  the Value named Shell and set it to the path of your front end.

(by changing it to USR above, this tells it to only load that as shell when that specific user is logged in.

if you are having problems with it automatically logging in as the wrong user, and then not running the desktop.  press ctrl + shift + esc to bring up the task manager...then do file - new task.  from that point you could run regedit to make the proper changes.  you could also do this to run "control userpasswords2" to select the proper user that you want it to automatically log in as.

i hope that helps...

[emopants92]

followed ur instructions above and went back and redid it with the boyac wiki instructions and still i get a blue desktop screen with nothing but my mouse and my start up folder is empty

[severdhed]

it could be a few things. 

1. are there any spaces in the path to your front end?  (ex: c:\program files\mala\mala.exe)  if so, when you specify the path in that registry key, put it in quotes..ex: "c:\program files\mala\mala.exe"

usually if you are getting a My Documents window popping up, there is something calling explorer.exe to launch, which is wierd.  i had a similar problem on my cabinet where i could not get the front end to load as shell no matter what i did.  as it turned out, it was due to a software conflict with a dell wireless usb adapter driver.  i had a dell usb wireless adapter installed for network connectivity, and when i installed the driver, it installed a wireless utility.  i had to remove the wireless utility and just manually install the driver for the adapter..as soon as i removed that utility, everything worked well.  so it could be a conflict with something you have installed, but figuring that out could be very difficult

[emopants92]

Yep tried the quotes in the sting value same effect a blue desktop with nothing but a mouse (not taskbar, start button, icons, etc) Is there any other shelling programs out there that work?

[severdhed]

when you are at your desktop, and you manually launch explorer, does it load the desktop, or just open up a file explorer window?

[emopants92]

it loads my desktop, and what i mean is all i see is a completely blue (like the deafault background of windows xp) with just my mouse cursor and i have to click ctrl alt delt to bring up task manager then run program then explorer.exe and it loads my entire desktop with icons and task bar. Hope that clarifies it

[severdhed]

ok, cool.

so if you are at the blue screen with the mouse cursor, bring up task manager and then try to launch your front end instead of explorer.exe  does it launch?