launch big box at windows startup

[Kondorito]

Yeap. Anything you place in the Startup folder of Windows, will launch automatically on OS start. I have there shortcuts for Autohidemousecursor and Bigbox. 

[thegreatiandi]

47 minutes ago, Kondorito said:

Yeap. Anything you place in the Startup folder of Windows, will launch automatically on OS start. I have there shortcuts for Autohidemousecursor and Bigbox. 

Nice. I wonder if there is a way to not have the windows logo Pop Up is Windows is launching. Because if you can get by that, it would literally seem like it's an actual arcade system.

[Kondorito]

Just now, thegreatiandi said:

Nice. I wonder if there is a way to not have the windows logo Pop Up is Windows is launching. Because if you can get by that, it would literally seem like it's an actual arcade system.

There are messy/3rd party ways to do it in win7 and win10. I have win8, so I cant XD

[omlifecrew]

32 minutes ago, thegreatiandi said:

Nice. I wonder if there is a way to not have the windows logo Pop Up is Windows is launching. Because if you can get by that, it would literally seem like it's an actual arcade system.

I'm interested in this as well.  In addition, is there a way to get the windows 10 welcome screen to go away after the the windows ten logo screen finishes? I know how to auto login, but even selecting that shows the welcome screen still. 

[thegreatiandi]

2 hours ago, omlifecrew said:

I'm interested in this as well.  In addition, is there a way to get the windows 10 welcome screen to go away after the the windows ten logo screen finishes? I know how to auto login, but even selecting that shows the welcome screen still. 

I'm using Windows 7 for my arcade, so I don't have that screen... luckily. Sucks though that you can't customize windows at all. I doubt that's a security risk for them...gesh.

[thegreatiandi]

3 hours ago, Kondorito said:

There are messy/3rd party ways to do it in win7 and win10. I have win8, so I cant XD

You're using Windows 8???? I haven't seen that os in some time now. If it wasn't so " made for tablets ", I'd say it wasn't to bad.

[DOS76]

I personally loved Windows 8 when it was released and think a lot of the bad press it got was Windows users stuck in their ways crying about anything different.

[thegreatiandi]

6 minutes ago, DOS76 said:

I personally loved Windows 8 when it was released and think a lot of the bad press it got was Windows users stuck in their ways crying about anything different.

Hey wait a minute... didn't I just see you in discord? Lol

Yeah, not bad. I liked the tiles feature as well. I mean...it was by no means...VISTA? lol.

[DOS76]

Now I'm going to sound really crazy but Vista SP2 with decent hardware and UAC turned off isn't really all that bad of an OS either

[Jaz808]

What's wrong with the very old way of : Dropping a program/app onto Startup, its how i set MameUi32 to start in Win98 on a first cabinet build
 

[thegreatiandi]

Just now, Jaz808 said:

What's wrong with the very old way of : Dropping a program/app onto Startup, its how i set MameUi32 to start in Win98 on a first cabinet build
 

I've never done that before lol. I guess i could hide all desktop icons and have a cool BG...then it will just launch after windows loads.

Make sense?

[Jaz808]

Yes, have a cool Background, while windows loads, By dropping the shortcut of BigBox or LB onto startup it will load after all the windows crap
Drop anything onto startup to have it run after window's, I will look at a better way to have windows screen hidden, i will get back to you

[mulder32]

What happens if you do all this but need to load more ROMs or do some work on the computer itself?  Can you hit F9 or something like during bootup to get to the regular windows screen?

[DOS76]

What I did when I experimented with this was created a platform in LB called Utilities and I put a short cut to Explorer.exe in there so if I needed to open windows I could go into the utilities platform and launch it from there. I ended up instead just using autologon which is in the Microsoft SysInternal suite and just put BigBox in my startup folder so while yes I do see Windows at launch the computer takes care of everything automatically to get BigBox up and running

[dov_EL]

Win Key 
%appdata%  -> Return 
Go to :  \Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

Create Shortcut BigBox.exe in Startup folder 

;)

[Kondorito]

Hey guys, I know this is an old topic, but just wanted to share that I just finished finding a solution to launch Bigbox shelled instead of explorer, WITH the possibility to launch as many stuff as you want with it (i.e. 3rd party apps), without the need of explorer (as without explorer running, the Startup folder does not work). And if Bigbox is closed, then explorer is launched automatically.

I started creating a bat file with all the stuff I wanted to run.
The problem was that when explorer is not running, bat files open a command prompt that is visible, so I created a one line vbs file that simply calls the bat file, that way everything is hidden.
Second stopper was the sheller, as Windows does not accept a vbs file as a shell, so I had to put the vbs file into a simple exe extractor (with the help of two steps in WinRar).

So, basically, this process involves an exe file used as the shell, that simply triggers a vbs file that triggers a bat file with all the stuff I want to load on startup. The bat file also has a line to launch explorer.exe once Bigbox is closed, so if I need to go to the Desktop Mode instead of shutting down the machine, explorer will come up in a couple of seconds.

I know that it is not very common for users to launch more than BigBox on start, but if anybody finds this helpful, let me know and I will share the files content.

[jjk73]

I'd love to hear more about this - I did not every find a solution to all these problems and just gave up.   What you wrote makes sense, and I could probably figure it out with a few hours of tinkering, if there is anything you can share to make that easier I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thanks so much for taking the time to post this reply.

[Kondorito]

Here you go @jjk73:

 

Create a .bat file with all the stuff you want to run on launch. Be careful! The second to last line has a /wait in it, so the last line that launches the explorer.exe waits to be triggered. Example:

@echo off

start /min "" "C:\Tools\Scripts\Blah.bat"

start /min "" "C:\Portables\Blah2\Blah2.exe"

start /min /wait "" "C:\Users\USERNAME\LaunchBox\Bigbox.exe"

start explorer.exe

Let's name the above example startup.bat

Then open another notepad and add the following line:

CreateObject("Wscript.Shell").Run "C:\the path for your bat file\startup.bat",0,True

Make sure to change the path I wrote to match your previously created bat file. Rename this file as a .vbs instead of .txt and close (i.e. startup.vbs).

Now, you need to have WinRAR in your machine. Right click on the created vbs file, and select "Add to startup.rar".
Once created, open it. You will see the vbs inside the rar. Then click on the SFX icon in the WinRAR toolbar.
In the SFX creation window, choose the Windows GUI module from the list and click on the Advanced SFX options button.
In the options window switch to the Setup tab, and type in the name of the batch file in the text field Run after extraction (in this example was startup.vbs).
Switch to the Modes tab, select Unpack to temporary folder checkbox and then select Hide all option from the Silent mode section.
Click on the OK buttons two times to close the open windows and create the EXE. The newly created EXE file is saved in the same folder as the RAR file containing the vbs file.

All done! 
You can now go to Windows > Run > gpedit.msc > User Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Custom User Interface, and select "Enabled" and type below the path to your exe file.

The good thing of doing it like this, is that you can modify the bat file however you like (adding and removing apps to be launched on startup), and the vbs and exe file will not need to be tampered with.

If for some reason does not work for you, you can always do Ctrl+Alt+Delete, select Task Manager, run new task, select explorer, and then go back to gpedit.msc and disable what you did.

Hope this helps!

 

Edited December 28, 2018 by Kondorito

[JoeViking245]

First off, very awesome @Kondorito!

after about 4 or 5 tries though, 6th time was a charm when I changed vbs to bat.  

55 minutes ago, Kondorito said:

In the options window switch to the Setup tab, and type in the name of the batch file in the text field Run after extraction (in this example was startup.vbs).

"...in the text field Run after extraction (in this example was startup.bat).

Works GREAT!!  Thank you so much!

[Kondorito]

39 minutes ago, JoeViking245 said:

First off, very awesome @Kondorito!

after about 4 or 5 tries though, 6th time was a charm when I changed vbs to bat.  

"...in the text field Run after extraction (in this example was startup.bat).

Works GREAT!!  Thank you so much!

Glad it worked for you  However I meant vbs, because that is the file that I compressed in WinRar, and the SFX needs to call for the file inside WInRar.
If it is working for you with the bat extension, maybe it is because you zipped the bat file and not the vbs one? Or you are simply running the bat file directly (and in your case you dont need the vbs file at all).

Nevertheless, enjoy!  

Edited December 28, 2018 by Kondorito