question for computer nerds

[scum]

My question is this; where I work we are making little computers for use in the oil/gas fields, they are just a little box with a touch screen on the front, no keyboard or mouse. In an attempt to stop the operators looking at porn or playing solitaire we need to cut out all the icons / taskbar. On our older systems (win95) the system.ini line ‘shell=explorer.exe’ is changed to ‘shell=ourprog.exe’ for many reasons this works really well for us, so we want to do it on the new systems (win98se). now, my problem starts here, when we bring one of the older win95 systems back to the workshop for servicing we open the little service port and plug in our keyboard then hit ‘alt+ctrl+del’ and end task on ‘ourprog.exe’, this leaves us with a blue/green screen with no icons and no taskbar. So to start anything we press ‘ctrl+esc’ which normally brings up the start bar but in this case it opens ‘taskman.exe’ how they did this I don’t know, but from there you can ‘file – run’ and start anything you want. but when I try it on the win98se system all the keyboard shortcuts are knocked out as soon as I change the shell. So how do I;
1. get the shortcuts back OR
2. remove the entire taskbar from the desktop (I can do icons)
and to top it all off we are not allowed to install 3rd party apps to achieve this. Any ideas? The closest I got was after I poured red bull into the case and turned it on, this gave me a weird looking menu that turned out to be a bit of snot stuck on the screen.

Thanks guys.

[Glenjo]

Why can't you run an app to do this?

[decoy]

if you end "ourprog.exe" and u get a blank screen, instead of doing this:
"So to start anything we press ‘ctrl+esc’ which normally brings up the start bar"
can't you press ctrl-alt-del again and just 'run' "exporer.exe"? but i'm sure there's something stopping you :roll:

[scum]

Glenjo, coz thats what the big boss man said.

Decoy, Win98se dosent have a 'run' command on the 'alt+ctrl+del' screen :( thats why we need taskman.exe, coz that has a 'run' command in it. anyone know how to add a run button to the 'alt+ctrl+del' screen?

[StarionBoy]

not sure if im thinking in the wrong direction, but could u use a start up disk of some sort (not sure if u even have disk drives) to run the programs u need

[ProZac]

You can get a fantastic set of instructions called 98lite that modify the win98se install, and use the win95 shell. This should give you the 95 taskmanager, and will have th added effect of making the whole system faster and cleaner, but keeping 98se improved (arguably) stability.

[TD05]

in the run=line in the system.ini file you could insert a DOS prompt command to run a dos session everytime the PC starts, you run that minimized so that no one (except you knows) it's running , because there's no taskbar no one is the wiser, then to run anything, just ALt - Tab and then type the command in the Dos box that opens.. it may be worth a try...

[StarionBoy]

how long would it take for someone to just push ALT & TAB tho? just by an off chance, then word will spread and they will all be looking up porn and playing solitaire again.. rofl

[fr335tyl3r]

starionboy...the operators dont have keyboards...only the techs do when they are doing maintenance.

I have done quite a few custom jobs on winxp and 2k boxes, never had a crack at a 98 box with custom dialogs. If its similar to winxp in terms of changing dll files to achieve results then it might be do-able...otherwise ide probably go with the command prompt minimized option, sounds like a simple work around.

[StarionBoy]

oh yeah :roll:
lol
well the minimised command prompt would be no problem

[starion84]

i am probly complety wrong here, but can poledit be used to lock the machine down good? i think thats on the win98se disk.