03
Nov 2008
106 Comments
Windows 7 to let users create a Desktop Slideshow from files, feeds

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.

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  • Orion

    Nice find!

    Anything else :P?

  • http://xxdesmusxx.net xxdesmus

    Wow, feeds could be pretty darn cool if done right :) Thanks for all the hard work!

  • http://www.jcxp.net David Taraso

    Darn, I was hoping for some sort of interactive RSS desktop background (woo! Active desktop!) by the title. But I guess that would render their pretty little RSS gadget obsolete :P

    Still neat nonetheless, nice finds :)

  • Loop

    Man.You did it again…awesome work…now if you could just find out how to unlock aero peek!

  • skierjosh

    Very cool, keep up the good work.

  • Tony S

    You would think that MS would throw you away for life by now, heh. But from the initial peek at these features, it looks like the shell team is accumulating all those wishes from past releases and just put it into Win7. Yeah! Btw, does it support multiple desktop images across multiple monitors? And oh – some refresh flashy screensavers and a new visualisation for WMP will be nice too!

  • http://www.ozlo.blogspot.com ozl

    Whoa!
    Really good man!
    hope to get this soon…
    good day!

  • chustar

    Don’t they have this on OSX?

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  • hug

    how to do that??

  • Acolnahuacatl

    Nice find, I’m surprised how thoroughly MS have hidden these features.
    On an unrelated note; Obama, eh? Good choice.

    Chustar: Yes, but that’s a little beside the point.

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  • BlackTiger

    Nice! At last! I dream about it for ages.

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  • http://www.webstylecenter.com Peter van Dam

    Nice to see they are updating every bit of Vista to make 7 are usefull upgrade!

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  • anonymuos

    What about transitions? Transitions (like those premium ones in the WLPG or in Picasa 3) if present only will make this coool.

  • .NetRolller 3D

    By the way, I am putting together a list of files that contain similar “protection” right now. I will post the list here once it is complete. Hopefully an “auto-patcher” can be used to go through all of them, and no individual patchers will be required.

  • .NetRolller 3D

    Windows\system32\wisptis.exe
    Windows\system32\ieframe.dll
    Windows\system32\shell32.dll
    Windows\system32\stobject.dll
    Windows\system32\TabletPC.cpl
    Windows\system32\themecpl.dll
    Windows\system32\themeui.dll
    Windows\system32\powercfg.cpl

    These are the additional files that need patching.

    From this, I guess these features:
    -Enhanced Tablet PC support – perhaps multi-touch enhancements?
    -Something new in IE
    -The themecpl/themeui one is likely Desktop Slideshow
    -Enhancements to the Power options CPL
    -Something Notification Area-related (perhaps Aero Peek?)

  • Mitchell

    Another great find Raf and it’s also good to see Chris doing his bit of investigating again too! lol

  • Loop

    Okay..you didnt get shot at the polls i see…any status update of the tool yet?

    BTW You rock! In case i hadn’t said that already!

  • Jay

    Its kinda funny that i haven’t seen anyone have any problems installing the m3 of windows 7 cept me. I’m not sure why for now but i assume one of the drivers that they included in this release is causing me to get a BSOD in the middle of installation. Right now i’m integrating my vista drivers to the install disk and testing in VMware.. and then my pc. Ill post back if that fixes the problem

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  • Darmok

    C’mon Raf get back in the game, Obama won celebrate with more Windows 7 goodness!

  • Mike

    Jay, This blue screen during installation used to happen to me during beta versions of Windows Vista, for me, it ended up being my wireless network card if I remember correctly, either that or the RAID chipset. In either case, if those two peices of hardware are built in, try disabling them in the bios, if your able to remove those pieces of hardware to so and run setup again. You may also try taking a peek of the setup logs. You can access these either by mounting the drive within another OS, or dropping to the console during the setup phase.

    Take a look at this KB article which may help you and describes the different locations of the installation log files during different setup phases.

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927521

    Note that it is obvious, that this will be related to Windows XP/Vista but i’m sure the same locations can be applied to the Windows 7 Installation as well.

    Best of luck!

  • Wayne

    Any way to bring out the Calendar?
    I haven’t seen it in Windows 7 anywhere

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  • Reddo

    @Wanye

    I think that calendar is supposed to be an optional download from the windows live services, along with messenger, movie make, mail, ect.

  • joseph

    there are some very interesting things in the registry like a key called superhidden plus multitouch kind of weird huh

  • joseph

    ok let me add go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Folder\SuperHidden then to to policy and it says dontshowsuperhidden weird huh wonder what is there

  • http://aeroxp.org tony

    @joseph: that is the key for hiding protected operating system files.

  • blunden

    I’m eagerly waiting for this. Looks like a great feature that I can see myself using. Overall I love Windows 7 so far. The new taskbar you helped us unlock is great. Always wanted that since I saw the PDC presentations on neowin.

  • Loop

    Damn Raf…Im pacing the floor right now in anticipation of your getting this thing done..any chance you could give us an update on whats going on

  • Mike

    I think the hidden features in the power control panel applet is the “core parking” which is available in Windows Server 2008R2, which enables the ability to throttle or power down individual cores. This will depend on the technology implimented in the processor and bios itself. I know on my Toshiba Laptop, I had the ability to turn off a core in the bios on an Intel C2D. As for AMD Turions, not to sure if that ability is there.

    By the lack of updates about these hacks, It looks like he’s given up on it or was ordered to stop. who knows. That just leaves us to modify the files ourselves. :P

  • Loop

    nah..idont believe he has given up..maybe run into a few snairs or dont have time to work on it but i doubt raf has given up

  • Rafael

    Hi Loop/Mike/All,

    Creating a patcher for all the system files has turned out to be a slightly more difficult task than previously thought, especially since I have to cater to a… beginner audience. There are only three protected features, two of which I already blogged about. The third isn’t very interesting (touch related) but I’ll blog about it anyway soon.

    I’m trying to juggle hundreds of different tasks, standby. I haven’t received any emails from Microsoft.

  • Loop

    Awesome Raf…thanks for the update man..keep up the work!

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  • joseph

    any updates yet

  • Loop

    he updated us a few hours ago..just a few posts above

  • Loop

    If you need any beta testers to test anything just let me know..I would be more than glad to help :)

  • InsideX

    Rafael, when we will have the patch? If possible places only the files to change manually. Thanks.

  • Nero

    Rafael why is it that some peole have jumplists in their start menu while some people don’t ? Is there any reason? Maybe the start manu jumplists are only available in 64bit version?

  • ITNinja

    Nero,

    When I unlocked 32 initially my taskbar did not tile open windows etc….I reloaded the OS and the ran the utility before anything else and now my taskbar (superbar) is correct but I don’t get the jumplist in my start menu either. You may want ti try that route and see if you have any luck but it seems the x64 bits are less buggy than the x86.

  • ITNinja

    Raf,

    Just let me say, a million thanks, for taking your spare time to do this. I know we all eagerly await the new unlocker. MS should just roll this out to TechNet, MSDN, etc… It’s not like it sn’t everywhere already and this is the best “preBeta” anything I have ever seen. I have to believe that this is waht Vista was supposed to be. My shop will be waiting on 7. Anyway, i digress, thanks for the work and I’ll keep checking and being patient !

  • Nero

    I wonder why only some people get jumplist on their start menu and others don’t get jumplists on their start menu.

  • ITNinja

    Yeah, it seems that on a 32 bit system i have had different results when unlocking but I have seen consitent behavior with 64 bit and all is working.

  • metuda

    where i can download the microsoft feed.?\

  • Reddo

    My 64 bit version has the jump lists

  • brian.shapiro

    Will Windows 7 have the wallpaper positioning options that are included with the DreamScene extra, Maintain aspect ratio and Crop fit to screen?

  • Timothy

    My 32 bit version has jump lists. It’s the arrow next to the icon in the taskbar. Jumplists aren’t visible in the startbar though, unless those were some of the other features he found in the newer taskbar he’s talking about in the update in his post.

  • Nero

    Timothy I am talking about jumplists in the start menu not the taskbar, only some people seem to have jumplists on their start menus.

  • ITNinja

    I am fairly certain that, if you are running the 32 Bit version, you will not have the jumplist in your start menu. If you are running 64Bit version, you will have the start menu jumplist. If your hardware supports it you should install the 64 Bit version of 7. I have installed both versions on serveral different machines and have found this uniformly to be the case.

  • Loop

    yea..seems like features are hit and miss..thats like on my boot screen..on my desktop i have the new version…but on my netvbook its the plain on vista boot screen

  • joseph

    2gb of ram for 64 bit is good right or it doesnt make a difference

  • ITNinja

    It will the same as 32 Bit with 2GB, 64 will come into play if you ever want address more that 4GB of RAM(3.5 actually)

  • Timothy

    Yup i just installed the 64 bit version and i have jumplists in the startmenu.

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  • Wayne

    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…

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  • http://www.nakedcleaner.com Ashleigh

    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?

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  • Mark

    @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.

  • Mark

    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.

  • Eclypse

    Wayne,

    Try running C:\Windows\diagnostics\system\Printer\DiagPackage.diagpkg it may help you, it may not.

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  • .NetRolller 3D

    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.

  • Rafael

    @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 :(

  • Timothy

    Rafael, can you give us a date as to when you think it’ll be ready?

  • Rafael

    @Timothy: Finishing up x86 copy now, hour or two? x64 still needs my attention.

  • .NetRolller 3D

    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.

  • Rafael

    @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.

  • Timothy

    @Rafael, sounds awesome! I really appreciate the work you’re doing.

  • Firehawk2012

    hey Rafael , what time zone is your clock lol? because my clock is diffrent then what time your comments say soooo yeh lol..

  • Rafael

    I’m posting the x86 tool now… give me 5 minutes guys.

  • Firehawk2012

    nice website by the way i admire it :)

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  • Wayne

    no luck installing the USB printer, ? I’ll keep trying

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  • http://www.dallascomputerpros.com Antoine

    Looks cool! Ill check it out.

  • KONSTANTIN

    Мне бы русски

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  • http://tektalk.org Justin Gerard

    About time, since OS X has had this feture since at least 10.3

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  • PACMAN

    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??

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  • EMS

    I have windows 7, (and I don’t have dreamscene) but I don’t have the option of checking my photos or making a slideshow. Can anybody help?

  • Sree14u2009

    i have windows 7,64 bit OS  i dont have personalize word when i tried to check on my desktop by clicking right clik,i wanna use slide show on my screen plz some one help me,thx in advance