How do you launch Bigbox straight after Windows boot? Any flashable/image version in developpement?

[Cristagally]

Hello everyone,

How do you launch BigBox from your computer? My goal is to push the power button, then automatically launch BigBox. No more windows boot, nothing. Straight into BigBox. 

No offense, but for now i'm playing retrogames from 2 devices:  my Intel nuc connected to my TV in my living room, and booting on Batocera. Why? Cause Batocera use a flash method to the SSD, providing an instant boot. 

On my main PC, i have LaunchBox and bigBox of course, but I'm launching it using my mouse, like any other programs. 

How do you launch easily Bigbox straight after boot?

Second question: Are developpers planning to do a flashable/image version of Launchbox/BigBox? Like Retropie, Batocera, or Recalbox? It wouldbe great, don't you think?

[Headrush69]

27 minutes ago, Cristagally said:

Second question: Are developpers planning to do a flashable/image version of Launchbox/BigBox? Like Retropie, Batocera, or Recalbox? It wouldbe great, don't you think?

All those are based on open source Linux. LB/BB can't legally distribute  a copy of MS Windows.

[Cristagally]

2 minutes ago, Headrush69 said:

All those are based on open source Linux. LB/BB can't legally distribute  a copy of MS Windows.

oh ok. But convert LB/BB to an open source distro is possible? My goal is not to convince anyone to do this, just to know if one day there will be a possibility to boot directly into BB.

[Headrush69]

25 minutes ago, Cristagally said:

oh ok. But convert LB/BB to an open source distro is possible?

That's a huge task and might not be practical considering the percentage of people that use Windows over other OSes.

26 minutes ago, Cristagally said:

My goal is not to convince anyone to do this, just to know if one day there will be a possibility to boot directly into BB.

For now you can place a shortcut to Launchbox/Big Box in your Windows startup folder.

There are some links about cleanly and silently setting up Windows to boot into LB. I don't have the link handy, but I think there was a good exhaustive and detailed instructions on the arcadecontrols forum. 

[neil9000]

1 minute ago, Headrush69 said:

That's a huge task and might not be practical considering the percentage of people that use Windows over other OSes.

Especially considering those other distros are open source and free, and Bigbox is closed source and requires a fairly expensive purchase to even be able to test it out.

[C-Beats]

I've not done it but know it CAN be done but you can set up Big Box to run as a windows shell by altering some registry keys. What this does is skips the process of starting explorer.exe and runs Big Box immediately instead. Because you need to alter registry keys and aren't starting up Windows "normally" I do need to warn you that mileage may vary and you need to be careful and ensure you do it correctly or you could break something in your OS installation.

[topher_csr]

What I did was map one of my arcade buttons to a macro that launched Big Box. its not perfect, but it works. I am not sure if you could just go into task manager and set Big Box to open on startup and nothing else to ?

 

[Cristagally]

Thanks everyone for your answer. so basically, everyone is launching BB just by double cliking on the icon? I'm the only one who want to use a dedicated computer to play my games? How people with a bartop are doing? 🤨

[C-Beats]

I mean you've already been given two ways to do exactly what you're asking so not entirely sure how you came to that conclusion. I personally just use the startup folder method on my cab since I also start a few other apps as well and do it that way worked well enough I didn't bother trying to shell Big Box.

[Kondorito]

5 hours ago, Cristagally said:

Thanks everyone for your answer. so basically, everyone is launching BB just by double cliking on the icon? I'm the only one who want to use a dedicated computer to play my games? How people with a bartop are doing? 🤨

Hey! I run BB using a custom exe containing all the stuff and apps I want to run at startup as the Windows shell (simply choosing it inside gpedit). This exe will also launch explorer.exe once bigbox.exe is closed, so I can go to Windows and not be in a black Narnia XD

In case you want to know about my process, this was the topic I shared it:

This is from 2018, so I might have tweaked the bat file a little bit since then (one thing I remember is that bigbox.exe changed some versions ago and there was a second bigbox.exe inside a folder instead of the main one that was the actual app running). But all and all, I think the solution is still pretty accurate. 

Edited October 20, 2022 by Kondorito

[Knowcontrol]

I have two posts in the following thread that will be useful