[WINDOWS] Boot directly to XBMC for Windows (in full-screen) as the shell on Windows?

look people, XBMC IS NOT A SHELL, PROBABLY WILL NEVER BE A SHELL. So having it be a (pretend to be) shell replacement is just going to remove some of windows funcunatilty since xbmc can't open programs in it natively. (meaning without the use of the plugin, an experimental one at that) When you fullscreen a video game it is not a shell replacement. This is basically the same thing.

Now what you CAN do is use a lightweight replacement shell with it. BBLean (http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean/) is a very decent lightweight shell. And you can set XBOX to boot using an autorun editor (tons of those on the net) or moving the program to the startup folder. I imagine in the full version of xbmc for windows there will be either some type of plugin that will let it autorun or a script that does it, but for now this is a temporary solution.

Though before you do ANYTHING, do some research. You might come up with an even better solution than me.

ninebr34ker
dear sir!
I absolutely undertand that XBMC is no full functional shell - but for my needing it can be in its functionality (only 2 minus - it start windowed and i need additional program for remite control). I think it is possible desiding in a some minutes to work and a little bit more to strategy.

I personally think that starting it the "shell" is a really cool idea.

Yes, you don't have a real window manager, but if you have a keyboard hooked-up, you just press <ctrl-shift-esc>, choose "file", and click "new task(run...)".

Or you could just keep a command prompt opened in the background.

No problem.

On a dedicated media center, I don't really see what you're losing here by not having the explorer.exe process run.

-Wes

BAG_Ass Wrote:ninebr34ker
dear sir!
I absolutely undertand that XBMC is no full functional shell - but for my needing it can be in its functionality (only 2 minus - it start windowed and i need additional program for remite control). I think it is possible desiding in a some minutes to work and a little bit more to strategy.

okay well let's see, as far as the remore control goes eventghost would help by leaps and bounds. and as far as it starting windowed goes let me ask you what have you tried so far to make it fullscreen.

I've worked with frontends before and there is a relatively easy method of replacing windows explorer with any application.

Something like this will be useful as we see more and more windows dedicated machines. This guide completely hides the Windows OS.
http://www.maximusarcade.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=506

My question is there a way to run a script on exit of xbmc? That script would launch explorer.exe
If not possible, we can always just use the task manager to launch explorer manually.

you can always write a simple batch file that starts your program when xbox exits..

You guys should also checkout this discussion here => http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=34756

Gamester17 Wrote:Today but default XBMC only ever starts in fullscreen if you pass the -fs parameter, (ie. "XBMC.exe -fs"), if you do not pass the -fs parameter the XBMC starts windowed, ...one idea would be to maybe change this default behavior so that it by default always starts in full-screen more and one has to pass a parameter if one want to start it windowed instead (like for example "XBMC.exe -w"), or have <StartWindowed> added to AdvancedSettings.xml

Charly and WiSo just added this...

Quote:and the advanced settings file knows now the tag <fullscreen> to launch XBMC in fullscreen without the command line switch.

...to the latest Windows release (14125).

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=34901

See post #6 of WiSo's.

Syntax is:
That should make the regedit trick work just about perfectly, I think

-Wes

waldo22 Wrote:That should make the regedit trick work just about perfectly, I think

Unless I missed it somewhere, we haven't solved the REMOTEXBMC issue for this option just yet...though I saw someone was working on an app launcher for XBMC, so you could potentially load the program after booting XBMC...is there a 'logon script' in use with XBMC that could auto-start this?

waldo22 Wrote:Charly and WiSo just added this...

Code:

and the advanced settings file knows now the tag <fullscreen> to launch XBMC in fullscreen without the command line switch.

...to the latest Windows release (14125).

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=34901

See post #6 of WiSo's.

That should make the regedit trick work just about perfectly, I think

-Wes

I just tried this in vista and xbmc opened up windowed. I believe I've got the advancedsettings.xml configured right because if I just double click on the file then it opens up full screen.