Curious as to what else was under Microsoft’s elaborate lock, key, and duct-tape protection scheme mentioned earlier, I had my friend Chris Holmes run a scan of his 7 system, as I’m still babying my laptop’s SSD drive. What we found were ties into system files littered across the entire operating system. Post-analysis revealed another feature tucked away in the corner – Say hello to (what I think should be called) Desktop Slideshow. If your memory is sharp, you’ll remember Long Zheng found mention of this very feature on MSDN first, of which was quickly sanitized by Sinofsky’s secret police.
As you can (or probably can’t) see in the video, the Desktop Background page in the Personalization applet looks pretty much the same, with the exception of some minor additions (after patching several files).
The subtitle now mentions the creation of slide shows by selecting multiple pictures
The control area is augmented with additional doodads to control slide show behavior
Desktop Slideshow, at least in build 6801, supports changing of the desktop wallpaper at intervals ranging from 10 seconds to 1 day. For a bit of variation, you can tick the Shuffle checkbox to have Windows 7 randomly pick a wallpaper for you. And to keep from sapping the life out of your laptop, you can choose to pause the slideshow when you’re on limited reserve. Think of this as Dreamscene, but without the ensuing nightmares.
For those of us that don’t have terabytes of imagery to keep your desktop fresh, you have a new source in the Picture location dropdown labeled Feeds.
From this interface, you can choose an RSS feed and automatically download fresh images, like NASA’s Large Image of the Day, to your desktop. At time of writing, however, this feature was not completely functional. I suspect this feature will either work at the conclusion of my OS-wide protection witch hunt or not work at all, being a pre-beta build and all.
Okay, where’s the “unprotect” tool for this now?
I’m reworking the existing tool to be easier to use and to unlock all known protected features in the various files across the operating system. Stay tuned, I should have something available tomorrow if I don’t get shot at the polls.
Is there anyway to remove the Beta 8 internet explorer from within Windows 7, and install explorer 7?
I’m trying to install a USB printer and won’t install because it’s conflicting with the beta 8. I had the same problem with Vista, uninstalled the beta and all is fine…
Sorry if this is off topic…
Wayne, you can’t get IE8 out, it’s the core of the OS at the end of the day.
Also Win7 has not even reached Beta yet, so you should expect issues ;) what printer, there is usualy better ways to install drivers, especialy if they need specific browsers?
@Wayne
Are you using an HP printer? No you cannot uninstall Internet Explorer 8 but you can install HP printer driver from Windows Update and it work fine.
I was able to get my HP PSC 1315XI working this way.
By the way, for those you who are complaining about the jumplist, simply click the up arrow in the superbar on a running task and click Pin this program to taskbar and the jumplist will show up.
Wayne,
Try running C:\Windows\diagnostics\system\Printer\DiagPackage.diagpkg it may help you, it may not.
Rafael: we are eagerly awaiting the enabler… At least, please give the positions to be patched.
Note: A possible way to enable ALL effects without patching might be this (requires 2 computers):
Install Windows Server 2003, 2008 or 2008R2 (AKA Windows 7 server) on your spare machine.
Configure it to operate the domain “redmond.corp.microsoft.com”. Add “127.0.0.1 redmond.corp.microsoft.com” to the server’s etc/hosts.
Create a domain user whose name begins with something other than “a-” or “v-”.
Note down the local IP of the server.
Add ” redmond.corp.microsoft.com” to the client’s etc/hosts file.
Join your newly-created domain.
Log in with the domain user. All features should be enabled and cached.
Un-join the domain.
@NetRolller3D: The cached result is only cached for the lifetime of the process. After un-joining and rebooting, you will revert back to the old features. I’m working on an issue that arose — PendingFileRenameOperations does not appear to rename system files, on Windows 7 :(
Rafael, can you give us a date as to when you think it’ll be ready?
@Timothy: Finishing up x86 copy now, hour or two? x64 still needs my attention.
Rafael: Why not make a copy of Explorer.exe in %windir% (for example, ExplorerUnlock.exe), and use Registry settings to set the shell to that file? AFAIK the same is possible for shell32.dll, and the other files are not usually locked while Windows is running (for Tablet PC features, as long as Tablet PC UI is closed).
Alternatively, please release the offsets where patching is needed first – this was what Stan did on aeroxp when MILExplorer was found, but before completing the Aero Enabler.
@NetRolller3D: If I put out offsets now, users will come up with their own homegrown half-baked patchers. No thanks. I’m willing to release them afterwards though, sure.
@Rafael, sounds awesome! I really appreciate the work you’re doing.
hey Rafael , what time zone is your clock lol? because my clock is diffrent then what time your comments say soooo yeh lol..
I’m posting the x86 tool now… give me 5 minutes guys.
nice website by the way i admire it :)
no luck installing the USB printer, ? I’ll keep trying
Looks cool! Ill check it out.
Мне бы русски
About time, since OS X has had this feture since at least 10.3
I downloaded the original Windows 7 Beta from Microsoft but i cant seem to klick the bar wich says “change picture every”
Anybody know why??