A few questions on hiding Windows

[Stormrider]

Hi. I'm in the process of trying to completely hide my windows boot, so that MALA shows in my cabinet with no hint of a OS behind. My setup is 368x240 with an ArcadeVGA. I have back desktop, no icons, black cursors, no login screens, bootskin custom logo, hidden taskbar, etc.

Problems:

For a millisecond, the standard white cursor appear during the boot process. I've even changed the hkey_current_user cursors to my black cursors (which really works). I have not found where the original pointer is stored. There must be a way to replace it.

There's a thing line like the top part of the taskbar, which is still visible on the black desktop.

The taskbar appears for a second during the boot process. Maybe a program or a OS tweak to completelly hide it?

Is there any way I could fix this without having to rest to the shell method, I mean replacing explorer with MALA. Would this cure these problems? If I use that method, could I exit MALA and have a normal Windows XP with the functions I have now? (I think MALA lets you run an application on exit). I want this computer to load by frontend by default, but I want to be able to exit an use Windows too. I don't want to modify the Windows registry everytime. I've heard there's a program that automatically make the changes for this. Does it work well?

Thanx!

[dekar24k]

Hi. I'm in the process of trying to completely hide my windows boot, so that MALA shows in my cabinet with no hint of a OS behind. My setup is 368x240 with an ArcadeVGA. I have back desktop, no icons, black cursors, no login screens, bootskin custom logo, hidden taskbar, etc.

Problems:

For a millisecond, the standard white cursor appear during the boot process. I've even changed the hkey_current_user cursors to my black cursors (which really works). I have not found where the original pointer is stored. There must be a way to replace it.

There's a thing line like the top part of the taskbar, which is still visible on the black desktop.

The taskbar appears for a second during the boot process. Maybe a program or a OS tweak to completelly hide it?

Is there any way I could fix this without having to rest to the shell method, I mean replacing explorer with MALA. Would this cure these problems? If I use that method, could I exit MALA and have a normal Windows XP with the functions I have now? (I think MALA lets you run an application on exit). I want this computer to load by frontend by default, but I want to be able to exit an use Windows too. I don't want to modify the Windows registry everytime. I've heard there's a program that automatically make the changes for this. Does it work well?

Thanx!

Hi. AFAIK the best solution to your problem is to replace the Explorer.exe shell with MALA and make MALA run Explorer.exe at exit ('<drive>:\<windir>\Explorer.exe' in XP/Vista). Then it should exit to Windows with no issues.

[Stormrider]

The problem with the shell method is that, when you exit mala and execute explorer, you only have a explorer windows, not the desktop, progman, etc.

I've found another way which consist in replacing userinit instead of shell (same branch in windows registry: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]). The result is the same: MALA loads instead of windows ui, but when you exit MALA and execute explorer.exe you have everything back. Of course, the perfect result is if you set MALA to execute explorer.exe.

Finally, I'd like to say something about the white pointer appearing for a millisecond during the boot, no matter if you have invisble or black cursors. The solution is to edit user32.dll. You need Resource Hacker for this. The pointer is at the beginning of the tree (cursor). You can replace it with your black or transparent cursor (menu action, replace cursor). Then, save user32.dll in another folder or drive. Now you need Replacer (it usually comes with Resource Hacker). Drag the original user.dll and then the modified one. Windows will complain and prompt you about restoring original files. Say no, go to hell you stupid os. Reboot, and you're done. Be carefull with this, if you corrupt user32.dll or use a different version you will have a bsod when you boot and you will have to reinstall. Make a Norton Ghost image before doing things like this.

[Stormrider]

Look, I've just recorded this video where you can see the boot process in my machine. The loading screen is set up with Bootskin, with no progress bar. After that, no cursors, no taskbar, just a black screen. The orange square is the TV EXT selection indicator (I cannot do anything about it...). Then MALA loads in low res. When I hit the exit button, explorer.exe is run and there it is the desktop will all the icons and everything running as a normal Windows session in 720x240. The only drawback is that the cursors are all black, but they are still usable and visible when not over the desktop background. Then I click the af1shutdown icon and the computer shutdowns. The little window you can see at the end is a dialogue which indicates that the computer is about to shutdown, and let you cancel it. I could tell the frontend to directly shutdown the computer, but I prefer it this way because whenever I want to use Windows for any other task, the only thing I have to do is let it boot, click one button in my cp, and everything is ready.