Running apps without explorer as shell Options

[royalbox]

I'm trying to put together a minimal core bootable build with no frills as a starting point for further projects. I've been through some of the scripts in nativeEx_Core line by line trying to understand what they do. 3 - hivesFactory.Script is still a bit of a mystery because HojoPe creates it's own files and runs those as well.

Annnyyyway... I have a bootable iso that boots straight to nu2menu using code from:

CODE

1 - ProjectInfo.Script
2 - MakeDirs.Script
3 - hivesFactory.Script
5 - CopyAndExpand.Script
EmptyHive.Script

(admittedly modified to hard-code some settings).

I also included the task manager and regedit scripts to see if some apps would work in this build. However, they didn't. Hmmm... I thought. Even trying to start them from cmd.exe gave the error message that "the program could not be run" or similar.

So, I went back to bare bones and set it to use cmd.exe as the shell, disabling explorer and any other settings that it told me couldn't be used. I also disabled OLE. This boots into cmd.exe as expected but it also will not run regedit or taskmgr.exe. Yes, those apps are in the build. I did a dir /b /p and checked.

So, after all this talk I have a question. What is needed in addition to the files and registry entries created using those above core files? After all Pebuilder creates a non-explorer build but can run these GUI apps.

Please no why re-invent the wheel? questions. My reply to that is Why bother doing anything, it's all be done before? Anyway, it's the journey that matters (or so they say).

I thank thee.

[jaclaz]

Please no why re-invent the wheel? questions. My reply to that is Why bother doing anything, it's all be done before? Anyway, it's the journey that matters (or so they say).

What about a "you are re-inventing the wheel" STATEMENT?

Wheels actually NEED to be continuously re-invented, as far as you don't re-invent the SAME wheel or a wheel that doesn't work:
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...c=2037&st=8
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...c=5881&st=5

Totally (read partially ) unrelated, check this:
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=3717

jaclaz

[royalbox]

Hello jaclaz,
Sorry, did you know the answer? I followed those links but they didn't seem relevant to my question .

[jaclaz]

Hello jaclaz,
Sorry, did you know the answer? I followed those links but they didn't seem relevant to my question .

First two are pretty much unuseful, just some "fun" about re-inventing wheels.

Last is (as clearly stated) not directly related, but contains info about the actual dependencies of Regedit, a (temporary - just for the sake of being able to kill a process) replacement to task manager, and the use of an alternate GUI shell (bblean) on a "Full XP" project.

I guessed that you could use some of the above info and "port them back" to PE.

jaclaz

[royalbox]

Thanks jaclaz, sorry I missed the last link somehow.
It seems that creating a build without the explorer shell using the barebones project is not complete enough to use as a core build. I tried using nu2shell as the shell but got an lsass.exe error. I know that nu2shell kills lsass to remove the time limit after changing the default destop to get rid of the resources limit, but I'm not sure if that's the reason. I made my own version of nu2shell in c++ a few years ago to do other things at boot-time.

I may create a basic build using pebuilder without any plugins, remove files that are safe to remove as listed in the pe documentation, zip it up and extract it for each project and build upon it. I can still use winbuilder for this as it has a nice GUI which is easier to work with than several cmd scripts as I use with pebuilder. It's a shame because barebones without explorer boots fast.