Xlobby as shell.

[ippo]

Hi!

I would like to start my HTPC with as few apps as possible, ie no EXPLORER! At least I don´t want Explorer to show.

I found a guide on AVS-forum written by a guy using Medialobby, (or something named similar to that, ) but it didn´t work to use his solution. Probably since he was loading his htpc frontend/app as a shell with ShellOn. I guess that .NET won´t be loaded when doing this, this is probably why my screen went black when loading Xlobby.

Does anyone have any tips how to do this with XP and Xlobby??

[jowaldo]

In your registry you should have this key, with "shell" having a value of explorer.exe

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon] "Shell"="NALWIN32.exe"

To change xlobby to this just make the "Shell"="c:\path\xlobby.exe"

Do this at your own risk however... I have done this a bunch of times with a different program at work, but never with xlobby... don't see how it would be a problem though.

You will probably want to make some kind of link in xlobby that loads explorer.exe though in case you need to get back in there for some reason

[mattdisaster]

I did the tutorial and the only problem i had running xlobby through shellon was a startup error, the way around it was to create a shortcut to the exe and then type in the location instead of to the .exe to the .lnk(or whatever you extention for a shortcut is) and it started up fine. .net ran and winamp started normally. Good luck.

-matt

[ippo]

Tnx for the tip... I´ll give it a try.

[ippo]

Now after a couple of days of inactivity I´ve tried the tips mentioned above, but it still ends up with a black screen and Xlobby frozen....

The behaviour is the same if I try to make Xlobby as a service with AYS...

What to do?

[fleshfield]

Hello Ippo,

I did a bit Shell reseach some month ago, finally Girder was working fine as shell instead of explorer. But nevertheless, some problems occur, so I found a better way:

Keep your default shell, but set a command in girder to hide the explorer taskbar. This will completly hide the task bar and start menu. With the show command, you can make them visible again. I use this config now for month without any problems

Leave a note, if I should post the detailed girder config.

Regards,
Arne

[Anzxio]

A quick guide for changing the Windows shell:
http://www.xlobby.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1365