How can I tell via a Delphi program if the Windows Explorer Taskbar is set to Autohide?
In Windows XP and higher, you can call SHAppBarMessage API with ABM_GETSTATE message.
Syntax:
SHAppBarMessage(ABM_SETSTATE, pabd);
pabd is a pointer to APPBARDATA struct.
header file is: shellapi.h.
If you want to get state of taskbar, use ABM_GETSTATE message.
you can call this api in delphi.
What is is that you really want to find out? Is it because you want to know the area of the screen that is useable?
If so, then I believe you can use the Screen.WorkAreaRect to determine the available screen area, where all (permanent) tool bars etc. are excluded.
Use Win32 shell apis (IsTBAutohide and others)
See Google Groups for undocumented apis.
Never read registry (ans stop removing right answers, it's stupid...)
U have to deal with windows registry because this information is keept in there. Value indicating "autoohide" is written(read) only while user logon /logout ont with his account
Registry key responsible for storing this information is located in
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StuckRects2
The only thing in there is settings and it is a 9th hex value
for "autohide on" this value is 03 for "autohide off" it is 02
Related
When I call up the Notification Center, I get the value Embarcadero.DesktopToasts.???????? as the reporting app for a limited period of time.
If I delete the link created by Delphi in the C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs directory and also the registry entries Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Notifications\Settings\Embarcadero.DesktopToasts.????????
the app name will be correct again after the second call at the latest.
How can this behavior be corrected?
As a side question, in which value can I store a better icon?
For this to work, there needs to be alignment between the registry and a special shortcut to the application.
These shortcuts may be found by running "Shell:Appsfolder".
So, if a shortcut with a similar name as your program already exists, Embarcadero does not create a proper shortcut and notifications show up as Embarcadero.DesktopToasts....
Cleaning up the shortcuts with a similar name as your product may solve your problem.
(Perhaps Embarcadero should not have checked for shortname name, but for the actual content of this shortcut..)
I want to change the homepage in the Edge browser via Registry but it's encrypted and I see (Protected - It is a violation of Windows Policy to modify. See aka.ms/browserpolicy) in Registry. Please help me to edit homepage in Registry or find where it's a violation of Windows policy to modify. See aka.ms/browserpolicy
ProtectedHomepages value is not really encrypted, instead it is an obfuscated buffer which contains homepages strings and the cryptographic hash for these strings. Buffer is obfuscated using the random generated seed which is also stored as a part of the buffer. I have done some reverse engineering research and published the results here.
So, basically, reading and decrypting this value is easier than modifying due to the required crypto-hash. However, reading capability is the only required for anti-malware software. I don't know what reasons you have to modify this value, hopefully you are not writing a piece of malware...
If it is only the homepage in Edge you want to set then change the URL below to your preference and then save this as a .reg file:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppContainer\Storage\microsoft.microsoftedge_8wekyb3d8bbwe\MicrosoftEdge\Main]
"HomeButtonEnabled"=dword:00000001
"HomeButtonPage"="https://www.google.com/"
Currently it is not possible to change the startpage of Microsoft Edge writing string or binary value into the registry. The entry to change is "Protected - It is a violation of Windows Policy to modify. See aka.ms/browserpolicy" -> Value "ProtectedHomepages". The value is a encrypted binary value, in which the current homepage is not readable.
When you have to set a specific homepage more than one time and you want to do it with C# here a Workaround:
Set the startpage you want via UI of the Microsoft Edge browser. After Change of it restart the browser and export the registrykey named above. Open the exported file and copy the binary data into a string constant or resource in your C# Solution. In the function to write this Setting you can copy the string into a byte-Array and than writing as binary value into the registry. This entry has effect after restart of Microsoft Edge.
The same way you should use also when you want to Change the Default Search Provider. But in this case in addition to the value "ProtectedSearchScopes" one more registrykey is to use -> "OpenSearch". This key does/should exists by third Party search Providers only. This key should be deleted or does not exist if the search Provider is Bing.
Disable your computer's network interface
Launch MS Edge. The recovery page will error out
Open a new MS Edge tab
Close the MS Edge tab containing the error message
Close MS Edge
Enable your computer's network interface
Launch MS Edge
Also...
Some malware will change the Edge homepage. You can see the malicious URL in address bar, record it.
Kill Edge with Task Manager or reboot.
Edit your hosts file in c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc, from an Administrative command prompt go to that directory and type notepad hosts and hit Enter.
Add a host entry like this
127.0.0.1 bad.url (substitute the URL you recorded above for bad.url)
Save the hosts file then open Edge. This method is helpful when you are remoted in and cannot disconnect the network connection.
No need to do it in registry. You can now change the homepage via the settings in Microsoft Edge
I'd like to add an option to my application similar to the Skype's option "run Skype as my computer starts".
Skype doesnt't go on the "Auto start applications" of the start menu folder, I'd like to have the same effect.
Note, one answer to this question suggets to add a key here:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
but I checekd on my machine and Skype is not there, so another way is used.
Skype installs via a registry entry, but it's in HKEY_CURRENT_USER , not HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
This allows Skype to be installed or not on a per-user basis. Using HKLM will autostart for ALL users.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
If you type "msconfig" into the run window and look at the startup tab you can see where "everthing" starts from in the Location column.
I don't use skype but my guess would it's in the registry in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
You just need to add a registry entry for your app in there (and delete it if the user unticks the box)
you can use the TRegistry class to help you reading and writing to the registry.
See this question. The question is about C#, but it only involves writing a registry value. It will be easy to convert it for Delphi.
Just run msconfig and select startup tab. You'll see the applications along side the registry key used.
Oddly, when I run regedit without elevation don't see the value HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\Skype also. But if I run it elevated then the value is there (I guess that Windows is playing registry redirection).
Best
I have created a Delphi Service which prints TQuickReports. Everything works fine if compiled and run as a Windows Application. But when converted to operate as a service trying to create a form containing a TQuickRep component throws the exception.
This service runs fine on many other boxes but not this one in particular. Here are some details:
Using QuickReport version 4.07
Box is a Windows Server 2008 operating system.
Using Delphi 2007
Printer.Printers.Count is returning a positive value. In fact I can list out all of the printers.
I have tried running the service both using Local System Account and Logged on as an Admin.
Is there a default printer set up in session 0? Remember that under Vista / Server 2008 / Windows 7, services run in a separate session. Whether or not the logged-in user has a default printer set is not relevant - it's a per-session setting and doesn't affect session 0.
Can you rewrite the code to gracefully handle that exception and pick a printer to use?
You can solve this problem by creating a new dword UserSelectedDefault with the value: 1 in
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\SessionDefaultDevices\Session_ID
Make sure you have a local printer selected.
You might give the user a way to select the printer for the service. The Windows service probably does not have a default printer set.
Set TQuickRep.PrinterSettings.PrinterIndex to set the printer number. Then, TQuickRep.Print to print the report.
A colleague ended up finding the solution. I should have added these are "network" printers and not Local printers (at the time I didn't think this was related to the problem). So the service needed to be installed with "NetworkService" as the user account under the logon tab. From the Windows Help:
To specify that the service uses the Network Service account, click This account, and
then type NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService
We had a simular problem here. Using TS servers, Citrix and Powerfuse 9.
Powerfuse had all printers capitalized, however they were shared in a mixed case.
This combination caused Delphi/QReport to crash
When all printers are from printserver to powerfuse in the same case (not important upper or lower or even mixed), the problem was gone
Actually it is a Delphi(5) problem. The comparison of the available printers and the default printer is case sensitive (Printers.pas):
if TPrinterDevice(Objects[I]).Device = Device then
begin
with TPrinterDevice(Objects[I]) do
SetPrinter(PChar(Device), PChar(Driver), PChar(Port), 0);
Exit;
end;
Changing the comparison to:
if lowercase(TPrinterDevice(Objects[I]).Device) = lowercase(Device)
solves the problem.
If using terminal services 2008, same user for multiple sessions, you should look into the:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\SessionDefaultDevices\Session_ID
instead of
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\
I solved a similar problem: If a Delphi application (or service) uses QuickReport, it runs before the system loads the default printer (or printers).
When QuickReport executes TQRPrinter.Init, the printer.printers.count is zero,
shortly after the system loads, the printer.printers.count is the number of printers,
but tqrprinter.int has already executed, so TQRPrinter.FPrinterOK is false,
you then see this error when you try open a QuickReport.
The solution for me was wait until the printers were loaded before launching the application (in citrix and terminal server). I solved this in two ways, either by overwriting tqrprinter or delay the dpr.
I am able to get a shell registry type context menu function to work , see below . But is there a way to tell windows to send multiple files selected to the same application , perhaps instead of %1 or %L some other parameter . What happens now is that it launches the associated application for each file in the list .
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*\shell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*\shell\sendtomyapp]
#="&Upload to (File*Pics)Mojo"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*\shell\sendtomyapp\command]
#="c:\Program Files\app_directory\App.exe -n \"%1\""
Is there a way to send an array of names like sys.args in python ?
My guess is to look into DDEExec instead of shell\open\command. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb165967(VS.80).aspx
Seems like a superuser.com question, but I think these kind of operations require a bit of code. e.g. you write a proxy program that accepts the files, and adds them to an execution queue or batch of another program (like adding several files to a media player) I don't know if what you are looking for is supported inherently in Windows
You will need a full shell extension DLL to do what you want to do here. So the answer is programming even if the question was not.