How to hide Windows 7 (1 Viewer)

[elhesse]

Hey all,

With the new release of MediaPortal and my eventual switching from Windows XP to Windows 7 I wanted to be able to hide as much of Windows 7 as I was able to do with XP. Not only to make my HTPC look less like a computer running Windows as my own anal attempt to completely remove any signs I am running Windows. The quest lead me to the Internet, where else would I look. What did we do before the Internet? I found many sites that told how to remove parts of the logon/logout screens and messages, but not in one place. So I decided to create a document for myself so I would not have to start the search all over. I would like to share this document with the community thinking maybe others were trying the same thing. It's a little rough around the edges. Take a look, give a try if you like. I will try to answer any questions anybody may have, but there is no guarantee's any changes you make won't crash your system. Buyer beware. I tested on a VM and a none production system and have not had any problems. I just want to thank everyone involved with creating MediaPortal and letting everyone get a chance to use a great piece of software.


Good Luck

 

[mlburgoon]

I can't open the doc. What did you use to create it and what version?

thanks

 

[elhesse]

It's Office 2007 doc. I saved it as Word 97 doc. Try that see if it helps.

 

[kiwijunglist]

save it as a pdf if u can

 

[elhesse]

Sure can, should have thought of that to begin with.

 

[Luca Brasi]

AW: How to hide Windows 7

Thanks for instructions! I'll have a look at it tonight.

 

[zicoz]

What I'd really love is a way to remove the taskbar

I'm going to start playing around with Windows 7 Embedded some more once I'm done setting up my HTPCs with 1.1.0. Hopefully I can manage to make Mediaportal the shell. It should be possible.

 

[mbuzina]

What I'd really love is a way to remove the taskbar

That is possible. Just start mediaportal as the shell instead of the explorer. Go to the registry entry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell

and change it from explorer.exe to mediaportal (and remove other autostart of mp) & reboot. If you need to get back to your start menu, just ctr-alt-del and start the task manager. From there execute the (New Task) explorer.exe and your start menu will appear again.

 

[zicoz]

Ah cool, will have to test that out as soon as I'm done importing my 9231 episodes in MP TV Series

Do I just replace explorer.exe with "mediaportal", "mediaportal.exe" or the full "c:\program files\team mediaportal\mediaportal\mediaportal.exe"?

edit: Full path is needed and it works

Thank you.

 

[zicoz]

Is there any way to launch the full explorer.exe from Mediaportal if one has started the HTPC with Mediaportal as the shell? I tried just running c:\windows\system32\explorer.exe but all that did was to launch windows explorer.