Introduction: Windows Invisible Desktop Prank
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About: I live in Estes Park, Colorado. I like anything to do with science and I do a lot of sciency things.
How to temporarily make your desktop bare, just the background and mouse. And, no, this is not just hiding the Taskbar and deleting the Icons, this is actually stopping the browsing program.
Note-This is my first Instructable.
Update 7/14/08: I found a new way.
Note-This is my first Instructable.
Update 7/14/08: I found a new way.
Step 1: Print This Instructable
It's pretty self explanatory.
Step 2: Using Taskkill
This will end explorer, but you have to type it. Try the batch file if you don't want to.
Open the start menu and type taskkill /f /im explorer.exe and hit enter. Done!
Open the start menu and type taskkill /f /im explorer.exe and hit enter. Done!
Step 3: Batch File
To run it as a batch file, open notepad (Start>Programs>Accessories>Notepad) and type the following.
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe&rundll32 user32.dll,LockWorkStation&exit for a logoff afterwords.
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe&exit for no logoff afterwords
once you have chosen a name, add .bat to the end. You will have to select All File Types underneath the file name box. Then save it. Copy it onto something like a drive or CD to take it around.
Just double-click it to implement!!
Note-I got the lock program from here.
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe&rundll32 user32.dll,LockWorkStation&exit for a logoff afterwords.
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe&exit for no logoff afterwords
once you have chosen a name, add .bat to the end. You will have to select All File Types underneath the file name box. Then save it. Copy it onto something like a drive or CD to take it around.
Just double-click it to implement!!
Note-I got the lock program from here.
Step 4: Getting It Off
To get explorer back, bring up Task Manager with Ctrl-Alt-Del. In the accessories tab, click New Task. type explorer and hit enter. You can now close Task Manager. Complete! Restarting also gets rid of it, unfortunately. I am working on a reg thing, though...
Step 5: How It Works
explorer.exe is the program that makes you able to open files, and everything is a file. Even the Start menu is saved as a file. In fact, you can prove that everything is somewhere as a file by going to C:>WINDOWS>system32 in My Computer. In this folder are many .exe (Which stands for executable, meaning it's a program) files. They have names like shutdown and logoff. You can guess what these do. There are also others like taskmgr, which is Task Manager, the program we used to restart explorer.exe.
So, if we end explorer, we have no way of opening file and programs, except for shortcuts. Lucky for us, Task Manager, which is what we need to restart explorer, is easily accessible through Ctrl+Alt+Del. That is basically how this works.
So, if we end explorer, we have no way of opening file and programs, except for shortcuts. Lucky for us, Task Manager, which is what we need to restart explorer, is easily accessible through Ctrl+Alt+Del. That is basically how this works.