program manager is the alternative to explorer!

[M_win]

I was reading various penny sized win98 installations (nano98, 98lite) and I figuered, why go through the trouble getting the 95 files when you can use progman.exe? it works to my test though I only gotten down to 6 MB, which, is still pretty good. I decided to do a web search on progman but found no one has any interest in it what so ever!

I mean, it can't be that bad! I would use it over explorer any day!

So Im deciding to make it more "windows 98 friendly", but I ran into a few problems. being that you can't make shortcuts I have to take an explorer link and "start in" the various dirs but I can't figure out the important ones!

The ones I'm missing are:

Network Neiborhood

Control Panel

Dial Up Networking

and Scheduled Tasks.

also if anyone knew how to shrink vmm32.dll being that it takes up one floppy itself. Would I be able to use the 98 fe if its smaller, or for that matter, 95 (a b or c)?

also this filelist, is all of the empty dirs really necessary? Im sure ill find out myself but it wouldn't hurt to ask.

It's just a shame I can't use things like RP lite with it

[eidenk]

The ones I'm missing are:

Network Neiborhood

Control Panel

Dial Up Networking

and Scheduled Tasks.

Apart from Scheduled Tasks (C:\WINDOWS\TASKS), those aren't real dirs. They are 100% virtual folders also called namespace extensions. They are all created by one or another dll and injected in the namespace structure :

Desktop

My Computer

Drives

The first two are created by Shell32.dll AFAIK. The other two need DUN and Task Scheduler installed respectively to be created and exist I think.

When they exist as a CLSID in the registry, even if their icons are removed from the namespace in My Computer, links to them can be created by using folders with special names :

Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}

My Network Places.{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D}

Dial-Up Networking.{992CFFA0-F557-101A-88EC-00DD01CCC48}

Scheduled tasks.{D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}

The text is optional. If created with only .{GUID Number}, you'll get working nameless icons.

Control Panel can also be launched using the following command :

C:\WINDOWS\CONTROL.EXE

Not sure any of it is helpfull for what you are doing.

[M_win]

wow thanks. it worked.

allright what you do is when you add new item you add the CLSID to the end of explorer as shown below

Description : Network Neighborhood

Command Line : C:\WINDOWS\EXPLORER.EXE ::{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D}

Working Directory : (Leave Blank)

[erpdude8]

Program Manager was a very useful app in the Windows 3.x days. Might be a good alternative to using the Start menu (then again maybe not).

See MS articles 116245 & 142255 on using Program Manager in Win9xME and any issues with it:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/116245/en-us

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/142255/en-us

Edited July 15, 2006 by erpdude8