Ongoing Dual Purpose HTPC (1 Viewer)

[m.standish]

Can anyone point me in the right direction
Im running Xp Sp3 with vista add ons for day to day PC but would like to swop it into htpc when im firing it throught the TV

What i want to do is not run ANY of the HTPC stuff (remotes, lastfm plugins, wireless controllers & MP) Until ive finnished and wanto flick over to HTPC mode, I need some software that will (script-like)

kill sidebar.exe process
kill (any other .exe) process

(not essential, but would be nice if any of these possible)
close any open windows
disable background
disable themes

then.... (essential)

load remote software
load HIP
load Last.fm (BelowNormal Prioprity)
load (any other s/w)
Load Mediaportal (AboveNormal Priority)

DONE!

It would also be nice if there was a way to then reload the sidebar, and kill all the remote & plugin stuff on exiting Mediaportal

If im going too far dont worry (my main priority is to kill some processes then load some files) from one tool (that i can shortcut to on my k/b), i know there must be some s/w that will script this easy enough i just dont know where to start looking!

It is important as i need all the spare resources as im running on 256mb 1150Mhz box, with a lot of tweaking and stopping sidebar i can get my stsem down to 80mb ram which is fine to then run mp off. my "fancy" stuff is consuming abou 120mb on top of this so i need to kill it before running MP

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

All that can be a pain, might be easier to make a dualboot setup.

EasyBCD with IReboot (first installs 2nd) makes this quite easy to switch from one to the other and you know you have a clean system for MP to run on.

Only a idea, until something better comes along

 

[m.standish]

thanks for the quick reply but i dont want to down that route (again)
Had some promising results with dualbooting and using minlogon & ewf but id like to keep away from that

Even tried diffent users with hardware profiles for the services but ive finetuned this install to run perfectly with both scenarios, i really just want something to make it simple to switch over modes

I noticed the mp 1 installer attempts to close certain processess before installing, if somone could tell me how the instal;ler is built this should give me a soloution

Half way there!, ive found a tool "process.exe" that will kill / change priity of any task, so i can kill everything ok in a batch file

The problem is i cant start remember how to start multiple things in a batch file,
if i run:

"c:\windows\Compro2HIP.exe"
"C:\Program Files\Last.fm\lastfm.exe"

it starts the first one, then hangs and waits until the 1st one closes before running the second one, how do you make it run them one after another as i have about 5 i need to run

Just in case anyone else wants to do the same
this is the .bat file and process came off the Command Line Process Viewer/Killer/Suspender for Windows NT/2000/XP (the DL link is at bottom of page)


What it basically does is close down all the programs that will not be seen or used in MP
Runs all the remote control drivers & tools + Last FM (Ony the stuff i use while MP is running)
Closes Explorer (not gonna see it while running MP - save some resources)
Runs MP........... WAITS until MP closes
Unloads all the remote control & MP specific stuff
Reloads the items that were killed at the beggining

All in all I saved 57Mb ram & ????? cpu time
the system came back after completeing the cycle to withing 1mb of the same ram used
All in all a perfect sucess

Excessive YES, Necessery - Yes when your running on 256mb ram with win XP sp3 & a vista shell LOL
Just read back on what i was requesting, thats gotta be the st time ive managed to do EXACTLY what i would like from some sw!

------------------START---------------------------
ECHO ENTER TO CONFIRM MP STARTUP
prompt

cd\
process -k sidebar.exe
process -k schedul2.exe
process -k iexplore.exe
process -k wmplayer.exe
process -k lclock.exe


start c:\windows\Compro2HIP.exe

cd c:\program files\last.fm
start lastfm.exe

cd C:\Program Files\HIP
start hip.exe

cd C:\Program Files\Common Files\VideoMate\
start comproremote.exe

c:\process -k explorer.exe

c:\mediaportal\mediaportal.exe

start explorer.exe

cd\
process -k Compro2HIP.exe
process -k hip.exe
process -k comproremote.exe
process -k lastfm.exe


cd C:\Program Files\Windows sidebar
start sidebar.exe /BELOWNORMAL
cd C:\Program Files\LClock
start lclock.exe
cd\


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