Full / maximised Screen Programs at start up for "vending machines / ticket machines"

Question

Hi there.

Just curious about the different ways vending machine companies / ticket companies get their application to run at startup full screen on a windows host machine.

Now first thing I am thinking is obvioulsy a link to the app in startup with a switch for -fullscreen.

There would be local / group policy as another option also.

Sidetracking a bit how do apps such as Skype work when they offer the "start skype when computer starts" option? registry?

Any thoughts / ideas / experience appreciated. Cheers

Answer 1

There are many ways to get an app to start automatically at Windows startup. The two most popular are

• putting it into the Autostart folder
• writing a special registry value (there is a kind of autostart section there)

I would guess most apps use one of these mechanisms.

As to "fullscreen mode", most kiosk-type systems / vending machines use a custom software as their GUI, so I guess that is developed to always run full-screen (there is no point in running it otherwise), so there no need to configure it for full-screen mode, it will always run like that.

Answer 2

With windows you do not have to have explorer.exe as your "shell".

The GPO settings "User Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Custom user interface" can be set to be what ever you want - it could be a program, or a simple batch file.

So for example, you could have a batch file that - mapped a network drive, run a program, if that program terminates, the script then restarts the computer.

You would then use autologon for that computer to logon again and start the process all over again.