Start explorer with taskbar

G'day,

I've replaced the default login shell (explorer.exe) with my own program, which then starts explorer.exe when required (and kills it when required). The only problem is, when I create explorer.exe there is no desktop or task bar? Regardless if I start it through the task manager or with CreateProcess(). Instead only an explorer window appears -- this is a clean default install of Windows XP SP3.

Is there something I'm missing?

Thanks!
Zac

It works fine for me. How are you spawning it?

Maybe:

explorer /root,%USERPROFILE%\Desktop

No luck. I'm spawning it with,

Code:

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STARTUPINFO si;
PROCESS_INFORMATION pi;

CreateProcess(NULL, "explorer.exe", NULL, NULL, false, NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS, NULL, NULL, &si, &pi );

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Either way, even if I use the task manager to spawn it, it still doesn't work.

It spawns an explorer window, just the desktop and taskbar don't appear. Thanks for the suggestion, but it didn't work.

I've tried this on several XP SP3 machines.

AFAIK Explorer tests the "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell" registry value to see if it is listed as the shell and won't bother creating the desktop or taskbar if it isn't.

Short of shimming it so it thinks it is when it isn't, there's no way around it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SMurf

AFAIK Explorer tests the "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell" registry value to see if it is listed as the shell and won't bother creating the desktop or taskbar if it isn't.

Short of shimming it so it thinks it is when it isn't, there's no way around it.

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Ah, that's odd. Thank you :)