Question

I am creating a shell-replacement for developers, which creates a new windows user, titled “developer” and only when you log into this user, should the shell be launched.

The replacement start menu is replaced with a shell based terminal with great features, the taskbar is replaces with a tree based view for windows, and the process monitor is replaced with a view where you can attach process monitors, debuggers, profiles, and memory leak detectors, etc.

I would like my application replace the regular windows shell. I have however came across a registry key that, on windows 7, works just fine. but on windows XP if I use the regular windows XP file manager the windows XP task bar from explorer.exe launches, even though I changed said registry entry!

Does anybody have any idea what it is I need to do to fully replace the windows shell AND taskbar using windows XP while still retaining use of the windows based file manager?: )

Edit:

Using C++, developing using NetBeans using Qt for my gui library. however, as I do not think this should effect the answer, I figured I would include it either way.

Answer 1

I believe Windows XP does not support per-user shell replacement (not sure, it’s been a while since I played with the desktop stuff), but you should be able to set the ‘Shell’ entry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon and prevent Explorer from registering itself as the shell when it first runs. This will affect all the users in the machine, of course.