I've hit a bit of a stump on the road to my goal of creating a screen saver. Before I began this project I did research and everyone urged me to create the screen saver using flash.. in which I did. Now I face the issue of converting it to an SCR (screen saver format for windows) . Now I've done my research and downloaded Instantstorm only to be disappointed by it's lack of 64-bit support and/or Multi-monitor support (Scaled mirroring across screens if resolution of main screen is different from other screens).
Can anyone tell me what is the proper way of creating an animated screen saver from scratch (or from the flash file I created preferably) which is fully compatible with 64-bit and has the ability to display the screen saver on multiple monitors.
Since it's a flash app you may be able to run it through a browser/as a web page. See this post for additional info:
webpage as a screensaver windows 7 and XP?
When I create screensavers, I do it through java, and then use launch4j to convert it to a .exe file. I then rename that .exe file .scr.
If you have issues renaming the file, go to control panel>folder options and uncheck "hide extensions for known file types". You can then rename the file.
P.S. If you are able to create a .exe file with flash, then you can just rename it from .exe to .scr as the extenstion.
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I have written a Windows thumbnail handler for specific file types. I have two pc's running Windows 7 Enterprise. On one pc everything goes well. On the other pc, the thumbnail generation works only when there is no program associated with the file extension. In that case the thumbnail generation is taken over by the associated program (I see an icon). Changing the associated program (e.g. to Notepad++) changes the icon. I suspect this to be a registry setting, or a folder view option, but I have no idea where to start looking.
Answers appreciated.
I made a small application on Windows 7, using Unity 3D, by the way. The application consists of an executable and a data folder. When the data folder is in the same directory as the executable, double clicking the executable will run the app normally.
Since I wanna use it as a screen saver, I simply changed the extension name of the executable from EXE to SCR and then I could install it by right-clicking the executable and choosing 'Install' in the menu. Thus the system could find my app as a screen saver.
However, when I copied what I built and tried the same steps on another computer with Windows XP, there were problems. I could run the app itself, but when I installed it as a screen saver, there'd be an error message indicating that the data folder couldn't be found. So my question is what I should do to make an app more than a EXE file work as a screen saver on Windows XP.
The data folder isn't found because by default when running as a screensaver the "current" directory it runs from is %WINDIR%\system32. The easiest way to get around this is copy your _Data folder to the relevant path (eg C:\Windows\system32\_Data).
When I first installed Windows 8 (64 bit, Pro version, with Media Player), the IE icon on the Start screen launched the Metro / Modern / Windows Store / whatever version of IE.
But somewhere along the line, it no longer does so. It launches the traditional IE desktop version.
Any suggestions how to get things back to normal?
Side questions: I haven't done any spelunking on Windows 8. Any tips for the following questions would be appreciated...
What are the relevant file locations for various "Metro" apps (both Microsoft and 3rd party)? I know about C:\Windows\SysWOW64\WinMetadata for .winmd files. C:\Windows\WinStore seems almost useless. What else is worthwhile looking at?
Ditto for registry entries
What's hidden where? I assume that apps have NTFS permissions set so that, even as an Administrator (and with doing a Takeown) I can't even see certain system/app-related things.
Where is the Start Screen located? Suppose I wanted to write a program that lists the Start Screen icons, their captions, etc
And any other internals info of this ilk would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Go to Internet Options, Programs tab and in the Opening Internet Explorer section disable the ckeckbox Open Internet Explorer Tiles on the desktop.
Greetings.
can anyone tell me how screensaver works while windows is locked. what are the win32 api methods that are used.
The only knobs you have are LockWorkStation() to lock the workstation and SystemParametersInfo(), SPI_SETSCREENSAVEACTIVE to activate the screen saver. Everything else, switching the desktop, looking up the selected screen saver, loading and starting it is buried inside Windows. I'd guess at crss.exe. Your question is too vague to offer help beyond this.
Do you want to implement a screen saver or do you know how the screen saver can run while the machine is locked? On XP there is a separate desktop for this, which gets activated by the GINA (a DLL running in the winlogon process) when the machine is locked.
To implement a screen saver, implement ScreenSaverConfigureDialog and ScreenSaverProc according to the specifications over at MSDN, export those functions under these names (i.e. use a .def file to have the names without decoration) and name the created DLL .scr afterwards.
I need to have a flash file be opened and viewed from a USB automatically on both Win and Mac.
I read about various solutions depending on the format of the flash output:
autorun.inf if Flash published as exe(Win)/app(Mac)) which seems to be working only on Win;
html embedding if Flash is published as swf, but this turns into a problem of launching html file.
What is the best known practice/solution?
For the PC, you can use an autorun script. On the Mac, there is no such feature (thankfully). What you can do on the Mac is have the Mac partition open, and using a background image, display instructions to "click here to start", or whatever other verbiage you desire, pointing to your Flash Projector file.
will this help ?