GUI and Command Line Utilities for Shell Launcher

Windows comes with the standard Explorer.exe shell with taskbar, start button, and desktop. Embedded/IoT OEMs looking to make their product look unlike Windows replace Explorer.exe with their own application. To make the shell replacement more manageable, the Shell Launcher features allows you to change the main shell form Explorer.exe to a custom shell executable of your choice. A simple enable / disable capability allows you to switch from custom shell to explorer shell. The feature also allows you to setup different shells for different users. There is only the WMI API set for managing Shell Launcher. The SLUtility and the command line shlmgr.exe were built on the WMI API set to assist with setup and management of Shell Launcher. SLUtiltiy provides a GUI interface with the key functions to setup a default shell and different shell for different users. Shlmgr.exe is the command line version that be called within a batch file to setup Shell Launcher. For example: when you create a customer installer with System Image Manager (SIM), the batch file can be called with a synchronous command.

Book: Starter Guide for Windows® 10 IoT Enterprise - Printed Edition Now Available

Windows® 10 is the latest and possibly the last Windows operating system from Microsoft. Embedded/IoT developers have taken advantage of desktop operating systems since the early days of the PC. From MS-DOS to Windows 10, many development tools have been created to help integrate the desktop OS into an embedded system. Rather than have separate embedded and desktop versions, Windows 10 includes many of the lockdown features that used to only be available only in Windows Embedded versions. Now everyone is working from the same operating system. Best of all the development tools are now the same. Windows® System Image Manager (SIM) allows PC Manufactures, IT Managers, and Embedded Developers to automate the installation of the Window 10 operating system. SIM allows these developers to install applications, device drivers, and Windows updates along with the Windows operating system, which helps to automate the image installation process and reduce any human error that can occur with manual installation. Also, the ability to maintain and support many platforms over a long life cycle is an important asset in today’s ever changing technology. Starter Guide for Windows® 10 IoT Enterprise provides the basics to get you started.

UWFUtility - Free GUI Utility for UWF Released

The Unified Write Filter (UWF) protects a drive by redirecting all disk writes to an overlay. Out of the box Windows 10 Enterprise supports a command line utility (uwfmgr.exe) to manage UWF. The UWFUtility provides a graphical interface to UWF so you don’t have to drop to the command line each time. Built on the UWF WMI API set, the UWFUtility provides basic status and some functionality to interact with the UWF. It also includes a couple of actions that are not included in the uwfmgr.exe utility: enable/disable TSCAL and Domain secrete key write-through, and getting a list of the files in the overlay.

Please contact us if you are interested in one of our Windows system integration training classes:

Windows® 10 IoT Core
Windows® 10 IoT Enterprise
Windows® Embedded 8.1 Industry / SIM
Windows® Embedded 8 Standard Advanced
Windows® Embedded Standard 7 Advanced