Remove/100% Hide WinXP TaskBar

Question

When AutoHide isn't enough, how can I code to gaurentee the taskbar can't be used/displayed while my application is running?

It's a full (touch)screen application (with no keyboard), that is being used in kiosk mode.

When the application exits it's ok to restore the taskbar.

Thank you!

Answer 1

You can hide the tray window like this:

HWND trayWnd = FindWindow("Shell_TrayWnd", NULL);

if(trayWnd != NULL) {
    ShowWindow(trayWnd, SW_HIDE);
}

Answer 2

Your application can be fullscreen and overlay the taskbar.

Answer 3

You could set your application as shell, that way the taskbar doesn't exist at all.

Answer 4

There are two options:

1. Make your app a full screen window. Don't, however, search for the Taskbar and kill it in any way. It's bad behavior, punished with having yet another backward-compatibility hack in Windows API that Microsoft will have to support forever. Here's a post by Raymond Chen to teach you some manners. ;)
2. Make it Windows' shell instead of explorer.exe. That one's actually more appropriate, considering that your application is the only one that's supposed to be run on your 'kiosk'.