Is is possible to install a gadget to a user's desktop somehow? I believe I need to copy all the files to a the user's gadget folder, e.g.
C:\Users\curusername\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets\test.gadget
But copying the files here doesn't run the gadget. How can I register/activate it?
Is it enough to shell execute test.gadget?
Late answer, I know, but the other answer is talking about Windows Sideshow Gadgets, and your question is related to Windows Desktop Gadgets.
It's possible to run the gadget on Windows 7 without shell executing the archive, you need to use the IDesktopGadget interface method RunGadget. Call RunGadget on a folder containing your gadget's files and it will appear on the user's desktop.
A description of the RunGadget method and sample code for C++ is offered here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd378390(VS.85).aspx
If you're using .NET, refer to a previous question I asked for how to implement the IDesktopGadget interface:
Stack Overflow - C#: Referencing a windows shell interface
For backwards compatibility (Vista), I would recommend you fall back to the shell execute method.
The following MSDN Article covers this:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc982277(VS.85).aspx
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Chroot is often assimiled to be a kind sandbox. But in Unix, it also allow use of programs on certain non-bootable installation.
When I search chroot for windows: I see things like sandbox. I don't want security, I want a way to rescue the system. By example, if I disabled syskey with ntpasswd, running C:\windows\system32\syskey.exe with a such utility would modify the registry entries of the of the offline installation, not the current one.
It could be called runon similar as runas for alternative users.
What chroot would means here for windows? Well, there is winre which allow having the same drive letters of your windows installation. There is an example: compact.exe is not present on winre installs. if you cd to \%Windir%\system32 (the directory of the offline install) and run compact, it won't work(except if you use it with /?). If you run
X:\sources\>path C:\Windows\System32\
You now use the files present in your offline windows. Base dlls such as ntdll.dll or eventually gdi.dll are those from C:\Windows\System32 instead of X:\%windir%\system32 and running compact will work.
But Programs runned by this way will use the current registry. The main keys (HKLM; HKCC; HKCR; HKCU; HKU; HKEY_PERFORMANCE_DATA) with their contents, are those of the current winre/pe installation, not those you have when you booted in your windows. So, if a program want to modify some registry entries, it will modify the Hives of X:\windows\system32\config not those of located in the C:\ systemdrive.
It is possible to mount the Hives of your offline windows under HKLM and edit them, but the programs which have their informations in HKLM\Software would still look at HKLM\Software and not at the name you mounted it.
The utility I am looking for would (partially?) hide the registry of winpe/re in favour of the one present in the offline install. The expected effect is that if you launch the registry editor with the utility, you will see the keys as if you would have booted into windows. (Maybe with some exceptions?)
The application would still use the Microsoft services of the current windows. I'd like launching services installed on the offline windows that are not installed on the current one. It would be nice to do this even for kernel ones. By this way, you would have the same behaviour when you launch sysv daemons in unix. Except here some mechanism for avoiding dual instances could be necessary, because the problems would be more critical on windows
The user access rights are an important part in the Microsoft systems. Specifying a user name and password in the parameters of the command line could be necessary. Some problems occurs with a bad User database configuration and prevent windows to boot. If want to enable syskey again, It would need to have the authentication informations which couldn't be used. But in some case like syskey problems, it make windows in endless reboots. I think one possibility would be to find a way to mount the user Hives by providing their path instead of login informations. Or if it is impossible, try to keep the user keys/informations of the current booted windows.
I don't know if a utility like this exist. I'd like help for programming it with mingw from linux (I can't have Visual Studio) . It would be good if it don't need to be installed. I would like it don't use .NET or the full windows API, because I would like to see it working under winre. I write for C/C++ under linux, but I never done it for windows. The only experience I have is provided by the fact I managed to build 7-Zip with winebuilder. I just know that the main function is called "main" for console programs and "WinMain" for windows ones. I am not familiar with WINAPI nor nt API. I just know there are not real equivalent to the chroot() of the Unix API.
I hope this is possible, thanks in advance.
The answer, after some review, is No. You can't do that. There are too many embedded references to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE in the various system DLLs; at the very best, you would end up with a very buggy system (since different parts of the system would be seeing different views of the machine configuration.)
I am trying to install my Metro Application.
So, my question is:
Can I move sample pictures for my Application to KnownFolders.Pictures and Videos during installation ?
And, how can I create installation file for my application?
Thank you
With the installation mechanism for Windows Store apps in Windows 8, there is no need to write a setup or installation program. That will all be managed through the Windows Store once your app is published.
Since you can't write a setup program, to accomplish a similar goal, you can put some functionality in the app to execute when it's first run, then save a setting to indicate you've already performed the first run operations.
This would be where you would put your code for moving sample pictures.
However, your app will also need the appropriate permissions to access the KnownFolders location programmatically - check out this article for details. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/Hh967755.aspx
It's also a good best practice to ask the user if it's OK to copy sample pictures to their Pictures library.
Related to another question on Superuser, I'm trying to run a Metro based application from the command-line. According to a comment on my superuser question, I could maybe find an answear on a PowerShell command or script. I already tried but found anything on any internet reference about PowerShell and Windows 8...
So, there is some specific way/command to call and run a Metro-style application from a PowerShell command on Windows 8?
There is no direct way to do this but there are a couple indirect ways.
vsdebuglaunchnotify, which comes with Visual Studio, can be called from PowerShell.
You could create your own exe that uses IApplicationActivationManager.
If the app is associated with any file types you could launch an associated file.
More information is covered in this thread on MSDN:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsgeneraldevelopmentissues/thread/8d1b0861-5903-4289-8cb8-541ddaa012fb
Here's a blog post by Powertoe that uses the IApplicationActivationManager way of doing it:
http://powertoe.wordpress.com/2012/11/02/get-a-list-of-metro-apps-and-launch-them-in-windows-8-using-powershell/
He provides code here http://poshcode.org/3740 that provides a Start-MetroApp commandlet for powershell.
Alternatively: I think some Metro Apps have protocol handlers, so that you can talk to them via a URI (e.g. "appname:dosomething") but I'm not sure how widely used this is.
I'd like to create some sort of script that will create a particular shortcut on the desktop of any Windows computer. The idea is to make the script available (to students in a course) so that they can download it to their computer and run it just by clicking it (i.e. not running it at the command-line). The script will have to check for some particular folders and files, and, if they exist, create the shortcut.
I'm a Linux guy and know very little about Windows, and so I am not even sure where to start to looking. I considered into using a Python script to do this, but that apparently requires installing some Windows-specific extensions, which I don't want to insist that that users do.
This can be done in VBScript, using the Windows Script Host which should be installed and usable on nearly any recent enough copy of Windows.
You want the CreateShortcut() method of the WshShell object which gets you an object representing a shortcut. You'd modify its properties and use its Save() method to actually create the shortcut file.
I've linked to the scripting guide at MSTN, as well as a page specific to the shell object. That should be a good starting point.
For this, I often work up a quick NSIS script and compile it to an EXE. The result is a very small executable. You can download NSIS itself at http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Download. I recommend HM NIS Edit to start with, as it has a wizard that builds a base script for you. Most of that wizard won't be applicable to your situation, but it is a good way to get started. Notepad++ also does syntax highlighting for NSIS.
There does not appear to be any good software to mount an FTP to a local drive letter (see here for details SF Question) so I was thinking why not just write it myself, but I have very little experience dealing with windows (at the programming level) so what would be involved in doing something like this? What needs to be done to get a new "drive" listed under "My Computer"? What needs to be done to then get the contents of the FTP (or other remote resource) listed that "drive"?
My initial thought would be you would need to write a shell extension to be able to show your FTP site, and that it would best be shown as a special folder in Windows Explorer. Your extension would ideally be written in a non-managed language that supported COM (C++, VB 6, etc). It would need to respond to events like:
The user highlighting a folder on the server
The user double-clicking on a folder on the server
The user dragging and dropping files to and from the server
The user wanting to disconnect/reconnect from the server
When you intercept these events you would issue the appropriate FTP command to accomplish the task (use LIST to get the contents of a directory, MKD to create a directory, STOR to upload a file, etc). You would have to take the results of these commands and show them in the folders view and the listview within Windows Explorer, and for that you will likely need to get up close and personal with the Win32 API. For that you can turn to books like Charles Petzold's classic Programming Windows. Also check out this tutorial on writing shell extensions.
It sounds like an interesting project.