Taskbar woes

  • Thread starter Thread starter Christina Louise Warne
  • Start date Start date
C

Christina Louise Warne

Hi,

I recently asked for help with hiding the task bar. KM replied with his
solution, but I tried that and it didn't work. This was after trying for a
couple of days with components created to tweak registry settings to try and
make the taskbar vanish.

We are in a position where we can manually hide the taskbar as all our
systems are fired up and tested before they leave the factory and we aren't
producing on a massive scale, so I figured I'd just let staff hide the task
bar manually, but even when its not locked, set to auto-hide and not on top
of all other windows, it still puts in an appearance when part of our system
shuts down whilst another is loading. We also lose our desktop image at
that time.

I've tried this with both the classic style and the XP style and they both
suffer the same issues, although I have to admit that the classic style
doesn't seem to be as bad. In a last ditch attempt to save my nerves, I
have resized the task bar manually to practically nothing and still it
appears.

Without using the windows API to simply hide the taskbar (this doesn't
reallocate the space the taskbar occupied) or using a custom shell, is there
anyway to lose the taskbar completely? I would have thought that the 'User
Interface Core' component or the 'Explorer Shell' components would provide
options to achieve this.

I hope someone can help.

Regards

Christina
 
Christina,

I wish I was posting to help.
I have recently inquired regrading this issue. I have had no success with
posted advice.
I do know that registry entries are not changed when hide taskbar is
selected and Stuckrects has not done anything for me.

I did find something in Microsofts knowledge base on how to make the
application cover the task bar. See article 179363. Use keywords: knhowto
KB179363.

It basically says to set the size of the application window to the
full-screen window explicitly. Sample code is provided.

I may use this approach. We only have a single application running.

Regards,

Mark
 
Christina,

I had to do something similar on a proof of concept device I was
working on and could not make it work in a satisfactory fashion at
all. Regardless of my best efforts to make it go away completely, the
Taskbar would put in an appearance at the points you mention in your
post. I finally gave up and made our custom app the shell.

Sorry,

Bob
 
Hi Bob,

Thanks anyway.

I think these kind of features should be added to Target Designer asap.

Seems a lot of people want to do the same thing and can't... or at least not
satisfactorily.

Mark suggested other things too, such as custom menus for each user,
basically, provide the whole administrator functionality within Target
Designer. It can't be that hard... can it????

Seems custom shells are the answer of the day... I have formulated a
solution from various posts on here... I just hope it all works out :)

Christina
 
Christina,

If your users and application design do not require an active Explorer
shell, you can get rid of the taskbar problem by overriding the system
Explorer Shell for selected user accounts or the .default user. We
just have the shell as a black screen display; I guess it might be
considered a minimalist custom shell. It provides the background (seen
only during window transition) for our applications which are launched
by the Logon script. A Tech support account on the same unit can still
have the complete system default Explorer shell. Here's the registry
entry for a user shell override(e.g. autologon account):

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"Shell"=C:\\Black.exe

With apologies in advance, I am not permitted to provide you a copy of
Black.exe.

HTH, Roy
 
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