The following information can be used to set LiteStep (or anything else) as shell on Win2k, WinXP, and maybe WinNT4. (Please post if you find it works on NT4.) It's pretty straightforward, and you shouldn't have any problems. You should be able to use explorer as a filemanager while running LiteStep.
TO SET LITESTEP AS SHELL FOR THE CURRENT USER:
1.
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\IniFileMapping\system.ini\boot
set the 'shell' String to:
USR:Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
2.
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WinLogon
set the 'shell' String to:
x:\path_to_litestep\litestep.exe
3.
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
set the 'DesktopProcess' DWORD to:
1
You can use the above procedure to set LiteStep as shell for as many accounts as you like.
To restore explorer, just undo any changes you made.
Hope that helps. :)
(To set LiteStep as shell on Win9x, just open system.ini and in the [boot] section, change the 'shell' entry to 'shell=x:\path_to_litestep\litestep.exe'. This will affect *all* users as Win9x is not a true multi-user OS.)
Thanks Omar. I guess people have wait for this for a while.
Is this the third point which blocks explorer from bringing back taskbar and all his messy stuff when only explorer.exe is called ?
Just looked in my Registry, and HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer>DesktopProcess is a string, not a DWORD value.
Smurth: that's right, that's what keeps explorer from messing up. setting that DWORD to 1 separates the explorer shell process from explorer filemanager processes.
Oh and Xinux: DesktopProcess should definitely be a DWORD, not a string.
So I need to delete the string and replace it with a DWORD. Gotcha. *rejoices at finally being able to beat the system*
If I uninstall Litestep, does all the new changes that you have done in regedit disappear? I´m not very good at these things, but I like Litestep....=)
if you use uninstaller properly they should...i think?
yes, all the changes will be undone. if you or some other utility has made changes though, they obviously won't be accounted for. But anything the installer does in the registry, it will undo when you uninstall.
omar, I'm trying to create a couple of regfiles that will make it somewhat easier to set/reset my shell. I've got the first one down no problem thanks to this thread, but is there a way to delete a registry entry (as in #3.) with a regfile. I'd like to have just two regfiles, one that sets the shell to LiteSTEP, and one that sets the shell to Explorer, but I don't know how to set up the regfile to get rid of that last entry.
frugus: hmmm, umm... i'm not sure. ;)
You don't have to worry about deleting, (i'm assuming you want to delete DesktopProcess because it didn't exist and you created it then?) just set the value to '0'.
Hi, I want to setup litestep but I'm not sure which file to edit or where it is for that matter.
Any help would be apreciated
I made the DWORD, but I still get Explorer coming up instead of Exploring.
I made a regfile a few days ago to help someone on the LS mailing list, and it seems to work as intended. So anyone who can't get this to work right, just copy the following into a new notepad document, save it with a .reg extension, and run it to add these keys to the registry:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\IniFileMapping\system.ini\boot]
"shell"="USR:Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"shell"="C:\Litestep\Litestep.exe"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
"DesktopProcess"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
"DesktopProcess"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"shell"=-
i love this program, but my memory is small. For win 98 what do i replace with 'shell=x:\path_to_litestep\litestep.exe' in system.ini if i want to load explorer next time the computer starts. Or do i just remove 'shell=x:\path_to_litestep\litestep.exe' from system.ini completly?
thanks
explorer.exe...what else?
btw...memory usage depends on the theme...you may wanna try another theme and see if windows runs better.
I have a problem, I used litestep on my win 98 system a while ago. When there were problems with new themes, or I would mess something up. I could always go into DOS and edit the system.ini file. Then I can set it back to explorer and troubleshoot.
Recently i decided to instal Litstep on my Win 2000.
With the Installer, the simplicity theme worked fine, but when I installed a new theme and restarted my comp it didnt work. Now im stuck with a blank screen when i start my computer. And theres no DOS to change it back to the explorer shell. I cant access anything.
Please Help
Press ctrl-shift-esc and you'll get the task manager which you can use to launch programs. And there's always ctrl-alt-f1, which gives you LiteStep's recovery menu. It even works on 9x. :)
thanks omar, this will be nice for when i setup my new system.
the nice thing about this is that you can set litestep as the shell for your first user, and keep explorer as the shell for the administrator account for updating windows, installing programs, updating drivers, etc.
hrmm.. i have a problem:
in steps 2 and 3 i don't have either a Shell string or an Explorer string. any ideas?
Create it...you will need it now because of step 1.
nevermind, i just made the regfile like paradox suggested and it worked fine.
this would work for any alternative shell wouldn't it? like if i created an account for bb4win and wanted to use this method for setting it as the shell (just change the executable part). am i wrong in this thought process?
im a bit confused. i have 98 and i went into system.ini or found it anyways. do i change shell from 'explorer.exe iexpIore.exe' to 'x:\path_to_litestep\litestep.exe'. im new and cant figure this out or is this bad and mess up my comp????
i didnt have to alter ANYTHING in my windows registry.
all i did was install shell on v2.0 which is REAL handy cos whenever my litestep screws up and needs some coding i can always switch back to explorer because it prompts a window on which shell to choose at the start.
Some of you may be interested in a little utility I wrote to quickly and easily set shells when I needed something to quickly switch between the bbox shells, litestep and explorer.
It comes with a readme, so there's no need for me to go into the details here.
Anyway, it's called SetShell and you can download it
here.
I use SetShell, it works great. I havn't had a single problem with it and I double checked the reg. to be sure it changed everything it was supposed to, and it did it all. Major props to you omar for writeing this very usefull utility.
Excuse me, if I'm asking a silly question... But:
I've downloaded one of the last Omars's installers... Do I have t do all this stuff discussed above? or it's done automaticly?
PS: Lightstep is greate! it works fine even now...
This may only apply to XP SP1 (I haven't been able to test with anything else) but the DesktopProcess value isn't necessary. During some troubleshooting I fired up a copy of Regmon and traced the activity of the explorer.exe process... it doesn't even read it, and without it being present I'm still able to use explorer as a file manager under LS without the taskbar, etc. showing up.
The value may have been disabled in the SP due to the problems that it caused on certain systems. IIRC these involved the "explorer window opening on logon" problem and some errors with mapped drives.
This is sort of related, but how do you boot the MSDOS in ME. I can get to it in 98 (As in pushing F8 when the machine boots.) I did this on the family machine which is running ME, and command line isn't an option, just Normal, Safe Mode, ect...
I wanted to see if I could get into the regedit from there in case Litesetp crapped out like it did on my 98 machine.
ME and 98 don't use regedit for shell configs...its in system.ini. And yes...the good ole F8 trick should work...but it looks like it was disabled for you.
I have been using Litestep for over a year now and have manually installed it quite a few times with little or no hickups (I don't use the installer because I need to know wxactly what keys are getting changed, and it's how I started) until recently. The past two computers I've tried setting it up on are having a problem with Explorer refusing to submit. I am running XP on both computers I'm trying to set up, as well as on all but one of the computers I've set up in the past. The only difference between all the onthers and my most recent 2 is that SP1 is installed before I install Litestep (this is because my current install disk comes with WinXP+SP1).
As has been said before, DesktopProcess doesn't seem to do anything anymore, yet I still have Explorer showing up. I do not want to enable "Lauch Folder Windows Seperatly..." because I don't like the feature and havn't needed it before. Has anyone run into this problem before and possibly a solution?
-Beau
Make sure you reboot after making those changes. Logging off doesn't appear to be enough.
Been there done that and I still don't understand why it's not working. I used the LS Installer on one fo my machines and everything worked fine, but I'd still rather self-install. If anyone has the steps taken during the installer somewhere I would love to get my hand on it. Thanks for the help.
-Beau
If you changed the IniFileMapping\boot shell value to look under HKCU, you still need to change the shell value under HKLM... otherwise explorer will still use that value to determine whether or not it should display the taskbar, etc.
It would help if you could post the steps that you took to do the manual install.