11/9/2006
gPhotoShow config for BartPE
A few people asked me about configuring gPhotoShow for BartPE. I did it a while back and don't remember it very well, but the following should give you a fair idea.
The basic idea is to get PEBuilder to copy the gPhotoShow screensaver into the image it builds and when BartPE boots up, you want it to autostart the gPhotoShow screensaver with the settings you want. BartPE natively doesn't support screensavers, so you can't rely on the screensaver being launched at a set interval. Instead what I did is to use the autorun feature of BartPE which lets you run apps on boot up.
Here are the steps to create the gPhotoShow plugin for PEBuilder and have it autorun.
- Install gPhotoShow and configure the screensaver the way you want it (transition effects, time between transitions, directory of images, etc.) gPhotoShow saves the settings in the registry, which we will use later.
- In the PEBuilder plugins directory, create a directory named gPhotoShow.
- In that directory create gPhotoShow.inf with the following contents:
; gphotoshow.inf
; PE Builder v3 plug-in INF file
; Created by fm
[Version]
Signature= "$Windows NT$"
[PEBuilder]
Name="gPhotoShow"
Enable=1
Help=""
[SourceDisksFiles]
files\gPhotoShow.reg=2,,1
files\gPhotoShow.scr=2,,1
files\gPhotoShow.cmd=2,,1
autorun_gPhotoShow.cmd=2,,1
This specifies the files you want PEBuilder to copy into your BartPE image.
- Create a file named autorun_gPhotoShow.cmd in the above directory with the following contents:
@echo off
title Starting gPhotoShow...
call %SystemRoot%\system32\gPhotoShow.cmd
exit
This is the autorun file that BartPE will run after it boots up.
- Create a directory under the gPhotoShow plugin directory named "files".
- Copy the gPhotoShow.scr screensaver executable into that directory.
- Open RegEdit and export the tree under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GPGSoftware into a file named gPhotoShow.reg. Copy this file into the plugin\gPhotoShow\files directory (same as where gPhotoShow.scr is). This file contains the gPhotoShow settings that you configured in step 1.
- Lastly create a file named gPhotoShow.cmd with the following contents:
@echo off
regedit /s %~dp0gPhotoShow.reg
%~dp0gPhotoShow.scr /S
This cmd file is invoked by autorun_gPhotoShow.cmd. It uses regedit to import gPhotoShow.reg into the in-memory registry and then invokes the gPhotoShow screensaver (note the /S parameter).
Now, create the image via PEBuilder, after including the gPhotoShow plugin and any other plugins you might want and you are ready to roll.
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