When plugging in a USB device the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon/option appears in the System Tray. Is there any way to disable this so it doesn't show at all?
I cannot use an option like a program or anything that have to be installed and/or kept running. The only option I really have is a registry or setting during Windows Deployment.
This is to be used on 2000+ cash registers so I couldn't care less if one cannot "safely" remove the USB device they happen to plug into the cash register.
click the arrow->Customize
then you get Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Notification Area Icons window.
Here you can have 3 options for each icon. And select hide icon and notification option.
Related
I am trying to automate the task of enabling/disabling the Hands Free Telephony service for a specific bluetooth device (headphones).
The normal way I am able to manually do this is by opening "Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Devices and Printers" and then right-click on the device, select "Properties", then on the Properties window that opens, select the "Services" tab, then check/uncheck the "Hands Free Telephony" option.
Searching around, all that seems to come up is commands to modify System services, or posts about manually enabling/disabling the way I described. The closest I have come so far is to open the properties window for specific devices using rundll32.exe from a Microsoft support post (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-invoke-the-device-properties-dialog-box-from-the-application-or-from-a-command-prompt-ca8ba122-ec37-2bbe-432d-6ff831f05fcd). But this is not the same properties window that opens from right-clicking in Devices and Printers.
Am I going about this the wrong way? Is there a better way to change the services properties for a specific device?
Windows 10, Firefox 70.0.1.
When I enable the Responsive Design Mode in the Dev Tools, the "Disable Touch Simulation" is on by default. Even when I turn it off, then close and open the Responsive Design Mode, it is switched back on. It is an annoying behavior, because the site I'm working on ignores all mouse events with this option on; and it's been off by default until very recently.
I'd like for the "Disable Touch Simulation" to be off by default. How can I do it?
In case you're still struggling with this after two months:
There doesn't seem to be a way to completely turn of touch simulation, but it is enabled because the device that Firefox emulates has a touch screen.
What you can do is open the device list (top left when responsive design mode is opened), click on "edit list" and than on "Add custom device...". There you can create a device without touch screen.
The fields are prefilled with the last device you emulated, so if you have selected the device you want to use before creating the custom one, all you need to do is disable the "touch screen" checkbox.
I need to do a pre-purchase evaluation of a Flash application that is intended for a touch screen.
Since I still don't have the touchscreen now, I need to run the application on my desktop computer and the application is unusable without a visible cursor.
I am using Windows.
Is there a way to unhide the cursor without asking the developers to change the application?
I've previously used remote access software (such as Windows Remote Desktop or TeamViewer) for this purpose. Another option is a virtual machine - in both cases you'll be able to see the cursor on the local/host machine.
If you happen to be on a Windows 8 machine, you might give a try to the Windows Simulator (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2011/09/29/first-look-at-windows-simulator.aspx, available for free with Visual Studio Express) that additionally simulates multitouch gestures such as pinch/rotate with only a mouse.
A few other ideas:
1) You can try using the "Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key" mouse visibility property (Control Panel - Hardware and Sound - Devices and Printers - Mouse - Pointer options). Although not entirely convenient, it might help you if the application doesn't require quick response times.
2) If the application is distributed as a .swf file and the right button hasn't been disabled, sometimes right-clicking (anywhere in the application) to bring up the context menu will cause the cursor to show up and remain visible.
I'm developing a software that should be able to "lock" the computer in it, so there will be no chance for any user to return to Windows and use other softwares except if he closes the software using a key (I guess this is what people call to operate in kiosk mode).
After much research I managed to disable Ctrl, Windows Key and Alt using hooks and registry files, so with this I could eliminate (I think) all ways of the user getting away from the software from the keyboard.
But now I found that if somebody plugs an USB device (e.g. a pendrive/data traveler), considering W7, the taskbar immediately apears alongside that traditional dialog where you can choose what you're going to do with the USB device you plugged (open its contents with Explorer, etc.), so somebody can go away from the software apart from the keyboard.
I would like to know how could I stop this, by code or registry (code would be much better!), so if somebody plugs a pendrive the taskbar don't appear and neither that dialog. If I can block USB input from thoose already used (by mouse and keyboard), that could also help.
Btw, if somebody knows of any other tricky way of going away from a kiosk-mode app, tell me!
Thanks,
Momergil
If you replace explorer.exe with your own application in the Shell value of the Winlogon registry key, your application will be started instead of Explorer. Then all you need to do is disable Task Manager, which can be done via a group policy setting.
The full path to the Winlogon key is
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
Why don't you just stop explorer.exe, disable Ctrl+Alt+Delete and Ctrl+Shift+Esc to enter kiosk mode?
I would like to completely remove the Windows 7 taskbar, including tray and start-button, so that the user can not reactivate it by pressing the Windows-key on the keyboard. however, all other explorer functionality (i.e. starting an explorer Window using Windows+E) should remain.
Is it possible to permanently hide the complete taskbar? Maybe there are some registry values on could change in order to make that behaviour selectable using a powershell script?
Thanks a lot
Here be my solution (it hides rather than replaces or removes the native taskbar - this allows it to work with programs that have a dependency on the native taskbar, such as display fusions taskbar).
disable-taskbar-always-top
Still to solve: [HALF SOLVED]
Eliminate the stupid line that auto-hide leaves with some maximized applications, such as Google Chrome
HALF SOLUTION -
If you move the taskbar to the left or right edge prior to doing the above steps, you don't get the stupid auto-hide line at the top or bottom of Google Chrome. Since the native taskbar is not mouse sensitive anymore, it won't impact your use of hot corners, or multi monitors (for instance I have the native taskbar on the left of my middle monitor, and it does not popup when moving between monitors using the steps in this post).
Okay, I think I have finally - finally - got a workaround that:
Keeps the native Windows 7/8 taskbar hidden for your session (you do have a couple of steps you need to do on start-up each time, or if you manually un-hide the taskbar).
Prevents the native Windows 7/8 taskbar from opening with popups or programs seeking attention (flashing taskbar thing).
Prevents the native taskbar from being mouse sensitive (i.e. despite auto-hide, it will not appear when you mouse over the hidden taskbar anymore).
Allows you to use the screen area that is occupied by the native taskbar (this is the problem of not combining Taskbar-Hide with the autohide setting; you can't use that screen real-estate).
Allows you to run alternative taskbars that are dependent on keeping the native taskbar functional (for instance Dislay Fusions Multi-Monitor Taskbar + [Settings >> Advanced Settings ?> 'Show On All Montiors'])
One Time Steps:
1) Download and run this registry edit to prevent balloon notification popups from the native taskbar/system tray:
Notifications - Enable or Disable Message Balloons - Windows 7 Help Forums
(You can open this in notepad to see what changes it will make prior to installing it, if you want).
2) Download and run Taskbar-Hide from here:
Hide Taskbar: Hide Taskbar in Windows 8 | 7 with a hotkey
3) Set the taskbar to auto-hide
Optional:
3) B) Add a shortcut to Taskbar-Hide.exe in your startup folder, to have it launch automatically with windows on startup (you still need to use the Ctrl+Esc hotkeys to activate the functions of taskbar-hide - though you could also script this if you were really keen).
Startup Folder:
C:\Users{User Name}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
Steps to hide taskbar after each start-up or manually un-hiding using Taskbar-Hide
4) Make sure Taskbar-Hide is running.
5) Make sure the taskbar is in its auto-hide state (i.e. you'll have to look at any programs that are currently seeking attention).
6) Once the taskbar is 'auto-hidden', press the hotkeys for Taskbar-Hide (Ctrl+Esc)
[This should mean that the native taskbar area is no longer sensitive to mouse activity]
One way is to replace the explorer shell with your own shell. This is the a common method done in Windows 7 Embedded.
In older versions of Windows (such as XP) it was possible to specifiy a shell for each user via regedit. I am not sure this is easily possible in Windows 7.
See https://superuser.com/questions/352865/how-do-i-change-the-windows-shell-for-only-one-user
Make an empty exe file and use it as the file to use in your "Custom User Interface" group policy. Additional information here.
I have found another solution that works nearly perfect for me, by just hiding the Taskbar and the Start button by simply sending both the WM_HIDE message:
Handle = FindWindow("Shell_TrayWnd", "");
...
ShowWindow(Handle, SW_SHOW);
The only problem I have with that solution is that the taskbar is not hidden permanently, i.e. as soon as one element is activated that does not have the focus, which on the taskbar leads to the item flashing in yellow, the taskbar gets visible again.
I'm not sure if there is a way to prevent Windows from re-enabling the visible flag of the taskbar in some way, or a method to hook to the SW_SHOW in C# though.