We take out, we add in

[tain]

Killing it is one thing, removing it is entirely different. I can vouch that you don't need it running all the time since I haven't used it much in the past few years. However, there could be a great many things that rely on it for some reason. MS loves to integrate things (see IE) so it wouldn't surprise me if the loss of explorer.exe made other things die.

Give it a shot! Setup a fresh VM, set blackbox as your default shell, rename explorer.exe to something else, and reboot. Then test lots of things to see if anything is broken.

[Squeeto]

So set-

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell (Reg_SZ) to blackbox.exe

(For now ok, later I will give it it's own folder)

copy blackbox.exe to HFEXPERT\WIN

ren explorer.exe to explorer.bak and copy to HFEXPERT\WIN

Add reduction for explorer.exe

That it?

[tain]

That oughta do it. I suppose you could do an APPREPLACEMENT of blackbox.exe for explorer.exe...that would be simpler but if there are any issues it would be harder to track down. Don't forget about blackbox's config files, backgrounds, fonts, plugins, etc.

Edited March 20, 2006 by TAiN

[Squeeto]

I've been busy playing with bblean (learning).

Well, I was hoping that it would work first time. But blue screen of death

It starts ok with logon but nothing after except mouse and screen.

I made shell.rem for HFCLEANUP having-

explorer.ex

added the blackbox directory to HFEXPERT\WIN

and I added to my personal .inf in HFSVPK the line-

HKLM,"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon","Shell",, "%10%\blackbox\blackbox.exe"

Before I try APPREPLACEMENT, does anyone see any omission/mistake?

Edited March 29, 2006 by Squeeto

[Tomcat76]

Did you put blackbox.exe inside HFEXPERT\WIN\blackbox?

[tommyp]

Squeet. The reason you only had a screen with a mouse is because there was no shell (see next para). Remember, there are two things that explorer.exe does: the shell and the file manager.

I tried various ways to delete msft's explorer.exe and found a few things. You give up all context menus in the "alternate" windows explorer. This is a big minus in my book. I routinely do a right mouse click and search. This feature is gone. Right mouse click on INF files is gone too. Also, I tried swapping the shell by altering the hives, running infs and running regedits, but the explorer.exe shell still wants to load up at the first boot. So if there is no explorer.exe that acts like a shell, then you'll get a blank screen. The reg setting for the shell is getting set somewhere else, perhaps it's hardcoded in some setup exe file?

One thing that is important with slipstreaming BBLEAN is that you remove any files with spaces and removing files that have 4 character extensions. Otherwise, you'll have a bad txtsetup.sif file. I hardly think it's worth altering hfslip for this only because the shell swap doesn't seem to readily work properly. Perhaps an sfx file is better for this? I don't know.

A crazy idea that may work is to place the contents of the bblean folder into HFEXPERT\WIN and rename the BBLEAN.EXE file to explorer.exe. In other words... HFEPERT\WIN\EXPLORER.EXE. I haven't tried this though and I'm not sure how bblean would act if it had a different exe filename. Anyone want to test it?

[Squeeto]

I'll try tonight. BTW, without explorer, how do I install my next inf file? Will I also lose the right click Merge on .reg files?

[fdv]

a lifetime ago, i did exactly this. i booted up my pc with a DOS disk. i deleted explorer.exe (windows 2000) and copied over an alternative shell from the D:\ drive, renaming the alternate shell explorer.exe. i know it's not so useful if i can't recall the shell or the error, but the gist of my post is this: don't go unwrapping everything that wears a pretty ribbon.

NO! Wait! that's not it. uh, the gist is this: it won't work. windows will try to run the new explorer and will just crash. just sayin'.

edit: see, the thing is, with those context menus, that stuff is in MS's explorer.exe. you have to add that stuff to the registry if you want it restored in an alternate shell with explorer.exe shut off (ctrl alt del, as has been mentioned) but when explorer is running again, you get two of each item in the context menu. in other words, with explorer off and the "install" right click context menu choice in the registry, you will be able to keep the menu item, but when explorer is on, you'll have two "install" items in that menu. i tried that, too...

the problem chiefly is that MS doesn't document the hooks in explorer or shell32. another bummer? the WINE project has rewritten a lot of DLLs, but substitutiing them doesn't work, either. MSHTML.DLL, from the WINE project, doesn't do a thing. closest candidate for an explorer replacement with MS functionality? it misses the mark, but explorer from the ReactOS Project. that guy is one smart cookie, having made a binary compatable microsoft OS replacement that can interchange some system binaries with windows.

Edited March 30, 2006 by fdv

[Squeeto]

So I guess it's pointless to let you know that it didn't work.

The next best then would be a blackbox.exe -install in the winnt.sif [GuiRunOnce]?

[Draugen]

Or, just have a .reg or .inf that changes HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\shell to %ProgramFiles%\bblean\blackbox.exe

this is how I do it anyway (exept I have blackbox.exe in system32, so I only say blackbox.exe), and what blackbox.exe -install does.

[Kramy]

If you're keeping explorer.exe for that device install phase, your best bet is to alter that registry entry with a reg file in HFSVPK. I've changed quite a few settings on my system, and aside from the recycle bin sound they all seem to apply properly.

If you really want to clean things up after, log all useless junk into a cleaner batch file and stick it on the desktop. Ahh...I'm too crude.

[Squeeto]

Sorry, Tomcat76. I missed your post.

Did you put blackbox.exe inside HFEXPERT\WIN\blackbox?

Yes, but as folk say, it won't make a difference.

Kramy

So if I leave my original reg entry:

and I added to my personal .inf in HFSVPK the line-

HKLM,"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon","Shell",, "%10%\blackbox\blackbox.exe"

but leave out my shell.rem it will install properly and run the blackbox shell?

I'll try tonight.

[Squeeto]

No, didn't work, but I notice that my reg entry didn't take. If I install my inf file inside the virtual box, I do get blackbox after I log back in.

TommyP

Any ideas how to make this stick? If it does go in, and before explorer is needed, I may still be able to include the explorer.exe reduction.

The background pic is probably being displayed without the expressed permission of the artist. But you know I have been downloading dozens of styles and tweaking this and that and it just happens to be what I have on the desktop.

[tommyp]

I have no idea on how to make it stick (see my post #36 of this thread). Maybe a cmdlines command? Cmdlines happens after svcpack.

[Squeeto]

TommyP

Thanks for the bblean suggestion. I have been playing with it for a while and it will be HFSlipped into my source. I like the look. Explorer will just have to learn to co-exist.