I realised today that my AV and firewall weren't starting up when I used bblean as shell in Windows XP x64. After I checked with autoruns I realised that this is because they are located in the 64-bit startup section of the registry, so bblean doesn't see them. So I decided to fix it.

What's added :

• Executes startup programs from both the 32-bit and 64-bit parts of the registry
• Disables Filesystem redirection while executing the 64-bit portion, to let stuff using rundll.exe to start properly
• Install now works under 64-bit (as far as I know)

Tested under Windows XP x64 SP2. Install for current user only not tested, but it should work.
THIS IS NOT A 64-BIT APPLICATION!, so all the plugins should still work. I tried to compile a 64-bit version, but I gave up from all the errors during compilation.

Please test and report if it works, or what doesn't. This should work under normal 32-bit windows exactly like the normal bblean, I'd appreciate it if somebody could test that as well.

This is only the blackbox.exe, so you need the other files from an existing installation. I'll make the changes to the source available later if it works as expected, and after I clean them up a bit

For a link on your menu to open the control panel add

upgrading to x64 in a month or so after i've built my new rig...
thanks in advance i'll test then

Still no love in Vista 64 but I look forward to the changes to come...

What happens when running it under vista 64 bit?

What were you using as a compiler?

Could you create a diff so I could merge this with bbClean?

Cheers,
Chris

Initially everything is peachy, the moment you use any environment variables (COMMON_STARTMENU, STARTMENU etc) or right click on any menu item, BB crashes. I can only suspect it has to do with how BB references system information vs how Vista 64 allows it to be referenced. Initially I though it may be a permission thing, but running as admin made no difference.

....it's a while since I used bb on Vista64, but I'm sure I didn't have any right-click issues on either bbClean or xoblite. Also, I'm pretty sure that even STARTMENU was okay ...... but that was under xoblite only. Unmodded bbLean (which I'm guessing is Carsomyr's baseline) runs a bit differently even on Vista32......

@noccy: Posted a diff against your bbClean SVN in the bbClean thread

I was using the 64 bit mingw compiler from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw-w64/

Most of the errors are due to integer size and pointer size differences, and I'm afraid that somewhere something might break if I don't carefully follow where the results of those casts are used.

This works great! I'm so excited! I've wanted an alternate shell for ages that would work on XP x64, but all the ones I tried gave me problems with my programs starting up. Now they all start up just fine ! One thing I do notice, however, is that the x64 programs seem to start up 5 or so seconds after everything else. I don't know if they're really starting up that late, or if the systray is just refreshing it's icons slow.

The only other thing I've noticed is that I can only access the x86 control panel, not the x64 control panel. Is this fixable? If so, I think that would make it work just as well on x64 as it does on x86.

Thanks so much for doing this!

I'll take a look if I can see anything which could be cuasing the delay. It's possible that there is a wait somewhere after starting a set.

Direct access to the control panel would require that it be compiled as a 64-bit app. I'll try that again during the next few days, but then it would need plugins to be compiled as 64 bit too

If you add

to your menu it will give you an entry which opens up the control panel directly in explorer. The full path makes sure we get the 64-bit explorer, which can open the full control panel. That's the best I've got at the moment

Now that you mention it, I do remember reading about that. That sounds like a lot of work

How hard is it to re-compile a plugin for x64 support?

Hopefully, once an official blackbox distro has full x64 support, plugin authors will start compiling both x86 and x64 versions.



Thanks for the fix! It gives an error, however: "Windows cannot find ',,::{.....} make sure you typed the name correct, and then try again."

I'm running XP Pro x64 SP2.

It would depend on the plugin. For some it might be as easy as just using the 64-bit compiler and it would just work. Other's might require more changes. I don't really know myself.


I'm also running XP x64 SP2. I copied that entry from my menu, and it works there.
Try opening explorer mannually and then pasting the whole ::{...}\::{...} bit into the address bar and see if it opens the control panel.

You could also try removing the ",," from the menu item. It works without it here, now that I try it.

Hmm...Weird, that seems to have fixed it. Thanks!

Also, am I correct in assuming that because the x64 control panel is a x64 application, it cannot be skinned? Meaning that as long as bblean is not a x64 executable, x64 applications cannot be skinned?

Also, I'm not sure if it's associated with x64 support or not, but I have a problem with the systray. It persists in the official version of bblean as well as your x64 executable. My firewall is a x64 application. It's called Outpost Firewall Pro. It starts up, and I can see the icon in the systray - if I mouse over it, it even displays it's name and some brief information about the firewall. I can't, however, double click or right click on it. It's just an icon. Normally, it would bring up the firewall properties in another window. Could this be because the systray would need to be rewritten for x64 support?

Getting full skinning under x64 windows will probably be the biggest changes needed in a plugin. Because we will need both an 32- and a 64-bit skinning engine running at the same time, and we can't have both loaded in the same blackbox.exe. It would probably require that leanskin be rewritten to be a standalone program that comunicated with a small stub plugin loaded in blackbox.

I use Comodo Firewall Pro (also an x64 app), and it responds fine in the tray. It's possible that Outpost doesn't handle the tray in a standard way, but I could be wrong. Comodo worked fine even under original blackbox, if you started it mannually. Which version of Outpost Pro are you using?