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Ian ([personal profile] lovingboth) wrote2004-02-15 10:51 pm
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Win2k geekery request

I want to be able to run a program on the main PC the clients play with at work without it being bleeding obvious it's running: I want to be able to hide a program from the taskbar.

It's not designed to be able to do this. I don't have the source to alter it so it does.

The one thing I liked about Win XP before wiping the drive and installing Win2k was that when you log off an account in XP, the programs you were running stay running in the background. They don't in 2k, at least in the default settings...

I can hide the entire taskbar, but that's a bit obvious.

Suggestions?
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[identity profile] superdus.livejournal.com 2004-02-15 03:49 pm (UTC)(link)
Try setting it up to run as a service... something like Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services in win2k, methinks...

[identity profile] pavlos.livejournal.com 2004-02-15 07:08 pm (UTC)(link)
A program that you or your friends wrote, or an existing program?
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Re:

[personal profile] lovingboth 2004-02-15 11:58 pm (UTC)(link)
An existing one.

[identity profile] syllopsium.livejournal.com 2004-02-16 03:49 am (UTC)(link)
When you log off on XP it doesnt leave the programs running - if you switch users however, it does.

What you need in any case is srvany from the NT resource kit - this lets you run any program as a service, although not to cleanly shut down the program.

You should be able to find it here (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9d467a69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd&DisplayLang=en)

Re:

[identity profile] pavlos.livejournal.com 2004-02-16 05:04 am (UTC)(link)
Tricky, then. If the program is classed as an "aplication" then the taskbar will show it. I've seen various commercial (but not entirely mainstream) tools that suffer from this sort of taskbar pollution.

More geek answer: Many commercial applications, such as the MS Office products, also have a COM API to access some of their features. It may be possible to write a short program that itself doesn't show up in the taskbar and uses the function you want in this way. Requires expert knowledge and tools.

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[identity profile] conflux.livejournal.com 2004-02-16 08:42 am (UTC)(link)
If it has not been written to be able to run as a service then you are stuffed. Try running it as such from the services manager and see if it barfs.
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[personal profile] lovingboth 2004-02-16 10:09 am (UTC)(link)
Ah yes, that's it.

It's not possible to switch users on Win2k, is it?

Re:

[identity profile] syllopsium.livejournal.com 2004-02-16 11:04 am (UTC)(link)
not as far as I know
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