Hi everyone,

I figured that it would only be polite to introduce my self before I start to bombard you all with all sorts of questions.
I've been dabbling with shelling for quite some time now, however I would not consider my self any where near proficient with it however I'm hoping to change that within the next few months. Over the last weekend I installed BBlite on my laptop with the intention of making it work seamlessly, you'll understand how much of a challenge this is when I mention that the laptop is running Vista as standard!

So far although I've been making baby steps of progress I have not found much in the way of documentation of Vista BB'ing (I can only assume that not many have done this before) and So I intend to leave a nice trial behind me for others who are doing similar projects.

For future reference, the laptop I am BB'ing is the following:

Dell Latitude|D830
Intel Core 2 Duo 1.80Ghz
Intel GMA 958
2GB RAM
MS Windows Vista 32bit Business.

If nobody Objects, I will use this post as a Blog, updating the progress and steps needed to BB vista, and hopefully if somebody else comes to do the same thing, they will be able to follow this as a help.

Here's hoping I get there in the end!

Hark.

commends and advise is not only welcome but greatfully received!

The Initial Build.

I decided to to for BBlean purely because in the minimal shelling I have done before, I'd gained a preference and familiarity for it, however As a quick check I did install both BB4win and xoblite and both were successfully set as the default shell and correctly booted as such.

With BBlean installed the following problems immediately surfaced:

1. Missing Icons
Problem:
It would seem that Vista has split the System tray (System notification bar) into too, one for normal icons as per XP, and one to contain the systems Vitals. Most notably the Battery Indicator, network icon, and sound icon.

Solutions:
WIP

2. Further Sound Problems
Problem:
Another instant problem was that with the sound icon missing from the system tray, the only way to change the volume was to use the virtual keys on the laptop, neither of which worked. Leaving me with no easy way to change volume. For those in a similar situation you can use the following run command to open the volume controller:

sndvol.exe

Solutions:
I have started chewing on the problem of the volume controls as as my first problem and so far a few good solutions have come to light, but I am not fully satisfied with either:

The reason for the sound not working is best explained by the following post by Eun-Hjzjined:


in the thread:
BBLean stops volume controls functioning... little help?

As mentioned above the Vista sound system means the most standard commands which before would have altered the System Volume will now only alter the BlackBox processes master volume making all kinds of things no longer work.

To get a rudimentary volume controller I downloaded BBinterface
as well as a UIless CMD program
NirCmd

Using theses tools I created the interface buttons in attachment below labelled Volume Buttons

Please note that the location of the nircmd is unique to my install, and you will need to change "C:\Skin!\NIcmd\nircmd" to where ever you have installed nircmd.

This at the very least gives a nice set of buttons which will change the volume and a temporary replacement for the icon to open the mixer, And I hope to soon have a slider version of this working.

On the issue of the Dell keys no long altering the volume correctly, although the BBkeyhook will help to make the buttons do at least something, they will not however for the reasons mentioned in the thread above alter the Vista master volume only instead alter the BlackBox's volume.

This sound issue is my current work in progress and I will update as i (hopefully) find better solutions!

place holder

.....but you have seen http://www.lostinthebox.com/viewtopic.php?p=17931#p17931 - for example. Also a forum search on Vista (just that word) brings up 256 hits.

I have been through quite a lot of the forums vista bits especially the first of the threads linked there. However A lot of questions which have been brought up by BBing on Vista dont seem to have been fully answered. As a cited example the issues of sound control in BB, although some stop gap answers are there, I feel that there is a way to code a more through solution to the problem, and I have already started to create answers which I feel are developed from those given in these threads.

As I hit each issue I am searching for existing answers and fully intend to link them in here as well as take their advice. However I am confident that not one of those threads gives a full account of problems of BB on Vista, nor how to fully work around some of them.

Ive almost got a proper Volume slider working now, however does any one know if or how to perform some form of Value scaling in BBI? The maximum volume level for windows is way above the 9999 limit of BBI.

Sounds like you're going to have to write a patch: pseudo-code volumeValue = (int)(volumeValue/10). IIRC the most recent iteration was the iTunes version.

Hi. Im using bbClean on Vista. I use bbIconBox as a sort of system tray. By making a shortcut to C:\Windows\System32\SndVol.exe you can change the volume with two clicks.

Thanks for the advice,

ive now managed to change the DLL to cope with much larger sizes, and every thing is almost working. Now im just seeing if i can change the program to work with the windows API's and retrieve the volume as it was in XP. Believe it or not, the problem is that compared to XP, Vistas volume API calls are MUCH simpler! its just tough working out how the XP versions worked in order to cut them out.