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REQ: HTPC Util - Hide Desktop for x seconds while program is being executed.

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famewolf:
There may be something that does this already but I've been unable to locate it.  In a nutshell I use Media center to record tv and Mediaportal to play shows....I have a "shortcut" in the menu of mediaportal that runs MCE but for a brief period while it's running the executable the user can see the desktop...I'm looking for a utility that will either blank the screen for x seconds or display a fake progress bar while blanking the screen until mce is fully loaded and running.  The same would be true briefly when exiting MCE and returning to mediaportal (the shortcut I use doesn't actually close mediaportal..it's just minimized so it comes back up fairly quickly compared to the load of MCE which I guess averages around 8-10 seconds.  The program could either call mce directly or just run and blank the screen while my "multishortcut" plugin runs.....the multishortcut plugin can run up to 3 programs at the same time when clicking the menu item so I could run the MCE program AND a small util to blank screen/provide status bar....or I could call the util directly and let IT call MCE.....I would however be using the same program to also call the Kylo web browser from mediaportal.   I'm trying to make the execution more "wife friendly" so to speak.

Has anyone heard of anything similar or can toss something quickly together in autohotkey that does the minimum of blanking the screen for x seconds while mce loads?  The rest is just pie in the sky hopes.  Thanks for taking the time to listen to my rambling.

mouser:
I'm looking for a utility that will either blank the screen for x seconds or display a fake progress bar while blanking the screen until mce is fully loaded and running.
--- End quote ---

kind of a cute idea for a little app..

dr_andus:
For hiding the desktop, Fences comes to mind, though it would require that you set a neutral (solid) desktop colour (unless you don't mind seeing the wall paper):

Double-click any blank space on your desktop and your icons will fade out. Double-click again and they will return. You can even pick icons and individual fences to exclude.
--- End quote ---

Maybe a macro could do the double-clicking for you? Just guessing, not my area of expertise...

Stoic Joker:
Instead of trying to workout complex timings and shortcuts, why not just have a full screen borderless black/blank window running all the time to hide the desktop. A single plain window wouldn't take much of anything to have running and MCE could (/should be able to) easily grab focus away from it.

If the taskbar was set to auto hide then it couldn't give away the ruse, and an embedded graphic could be added to the window to make it look like something is/was about to happening.

mouser:
I don't know, i think his original idea still seems simpler and more useful in general: A utility you can invoke, which puts a black window on top covering the screen for a specified amount of time and then exits.
Ideally with a nice commandline customizable text message and/or a "please wait" animation.

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