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Getting rid of windows shell

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Edvard:
I guess the only thing I'd need it to do is hide those damn minimized windows on the bottom of the screen, that can't be that difficult but... I don't even know where to start!
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Any replacement shell would do that for you.
Well, as far as I know there's nothing preventing you to use FARR as your system shell and NexusFile as your default file manager, so what are you waiting for?
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The shell takes care of a lot more than just launching programs. (DDE messaging, for example) so I don't think simply setting farr.exe as your shell is going to be a good idea.
most shell replacements haven't even been updated since 2-3 years!
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Litestep is still being developed and has the largest user base. Right now, Vista compatibility is still being worked on.
Just setting Litestep as your shell with no configuration shouldn't show minimized windows, I'll check...

Edvard:
OK, yes. Running Litestep with a blank step.rc file will get you no minimized windows.
Right now it's running 9.5 megs of memory, 0% cpu, ~5 megs Virtual memory size (whatever that means)...

Give it a shot
Here's my AHK script to switch to litestep and log off:

--- ---shell=c:\progra~1\litestep\litestep.exe
shellid=LiteStep

RegWrite,REG_SZ,HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\IniFileMapping\system.ini\boot,Shell,USR:Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

RegWrite,REG_SZ,HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon,Shell,explorer.exe

RegWrite,REG_SZ,HKEY_CURRENT_USER,Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon,Shell,%shell%

RegWrite,REG_SZ,HKEY_CURRENT_USER,Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon,ShellID,%shellid%

RegWrite,REG_DWord,HKEY_CURRENT_USER,Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer,DesktopProcess,1

RegWrite,REG_SZ,HKEY_CURRENT_USER,Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer,BrowseNewProcess,yes

Shutdown,0
When you log in, Litestep will be your shell and I'm sure you've set up everything else to start up automatically, right?.

For this script, I included everything I could glean about setting an alternative shell.
If you decide to use it, let me know if you have questions.

scancode:
Liteshell, maybe? http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~mosses/rob/liteshell.html
-TucknDar (October 19, 2008, 01:47 PM)
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I don't know... looks like one of the most poorly documented shells in the world! :S
-Ampeter (October 21, 2008, 12:50 PM)
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Do you really need any docs? Liteshell rocks!

What could I do? I've thought about a shell replacement but litestep and bblean use way too much resources for my taste (specially cpu)...
-Ampeter (October 19, 2008, 01:36 PM)
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Are you serious? I'm running bblean on my Asus Eee 900  (1GB RAM, no swapfile, 630mhz celeron, xpsp3) and I never saw it taking more than 5% CPU (while opening and closing lots of windows, I think it was bbleanskin's fault) and eating more than 4MB of ram.

I attach my whole bblean setup so you can see for yourself:  (see attachment in previous post), and a screenshot.
 (see attachment in previous post)
-scancode (October 19, 2008, 03:19 PM)
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Well, maybe it was because I was running a different blackbox or I hadn't installed it properly but last time I tried it was almost constantly using 2-8% of my (crappy) CPU, and process explorer showed it was using more CPU cycles than explorer.exe IIRC.

Your BBlean setup looks really cool though.. specially that bbMemLimiter plugin! what does it do exactly?


BTW I see you are using a Spanish version of Windows... ¿Eres español o latinoamericano por casualidad?  ;)

-Ampeter (October 21, 2008, 12:50 PM)
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Soy Argentino... Buenos Aires, Argentina... Luján, Buenos Aires, Argentina... Pueblo Nuevo, Luján, Buenos Aires, Argentina... etc :D

Yup... bbMemLimiter... I don't know what it does, the name looked cool... J/K...
It simply calls SetProcessWorkingSetSize to swap out all unused memory to disk... but since I'm not using any swap file... :) Doesn't lead to an insane performance hit on swap-enabled systems tho...

Well, my UMPC has 720 mb of ram total, so the main advantage to me is not having explorer.exe wasting 30mb all the time considering I don't use anything of what it does...
-Ampeter (October 21, 2008, 12:50 PM)
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On other news... nLite the fuckfunk outta your WinXP install :)

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