Meatball Surgery, the Taskbar, Toolbars, and You
It takes me a while, but when I get used to something, I hate to change. Windows 7 introduced the new Taskbar, and I hate it. I hate having to click or hover over a ‘stack’ PSH windows to select one. I prefer the old XP (rest in peace) way, where each window has its own icon in the taskbar.
And the Desktop Toolbar – I miss it. There’s a certain utility in being able to find something without first minimizing all the windows with Win+D (or Alt+Shift+Tab).
Here’s some meatball surgery to add those back. Why take all this time when it’s only a few clicks on my desktop? Because I just gained rights to a new lab, which means hundreds of machines that may or many not need logging onto, which means a lot of clicking if I want a consistent desktop.
Note: the part to reload the taskbar (by restarting explorer.exe) uses the Get-ProcessByUsername here, because I don’t want to kill all the explorer.exe processes on the machine, just mine.
https://blogs.msdn.com/b/timid/archive/2013/08/08/getting-user-names-for-processes.aspx
#Configure taskbar: small icons, never combine
$local:regKeys = @{
TaskbarSizeMove = '0x1';
DisablePreviewDesktop = '0x0';
TaskbarSmallIcons = '0x1';
TaskbarGlomLevel = '0x2'
}
$local:regKeys.Keys |
% {
$key = $_;
if (!((Get-Item -Path HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced).GetValueNames() -match $key))
{
reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced /v $key /t REG_DWORD /d $local:regKeys.$key;
}
} | Out-Null;
# Add Desktop Taskbar
if (!(Test-Path -Path HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Streams\Desktop) -or
!((Get-Item -Path HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Streams\Desktop).GetValueNames() -match "TaskbarWinXP"))
{
@"
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Streams\Desktop]
"TaskbarWinXP"=hex:0c,00,00,00,08,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,aa,4f,28,68,\
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65,73,30,38,00,00,00,00,f0,de,5d,83,56,38,4f,42,a2,7a,0f,c0,8d,be,63,ec,79,\
18,d1,04,53,92,e3,11,90,c9,d8,d3,85,67,6e,cc,f0,de,5d,83,56,38,4f,42,a2,7a,\
0f,c0,8d,be,63,ec,79,18,d1,04,53,92,e3,11,90,c9,d8,d3,85,67,6e,cc,00,00,00,\
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50,e0,4f,d0,20,ea,3a,69,10,a2,d8,08,00,2b,30,30,9d,00,00,00,00,00,00,22,00,\
00,00,03,00,00,00,14,00,1f,58,0d,1a,2c,f0,21,be,50,43,88,b0,73,67,fc,96,ef,\
3c,00,00,00,00,00,00,22,00,00,00,04,00,00,00,14,00,1f,70,68,06,ee,26,0a,a0,\
d7,44,93,71,be,b0,64,c9,86,83,00,00,00,00,00,00,22,00,00,00,05,00,00,00,14,\
00,1f,78,40,f0,5f,64,81,50,1b,10,9f,08,00,aa,00,2f,95,4e,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
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fd,cb,a0,00,00,00,00,00,00,9a,00,00,00,07,00,00,00,8c,00,3a,00,32,06,00,00,\
1c,43,0f,b5,20,00,48,50,53,59,53,54,7e,31,2e,4c,4e,4b,00,00,70,00,08,00,04,\
00,ef,be,1c,43,0f,b5,1c,43,0f,b5,2a,00,00,00,e1,0e,01,00,00,00,08,00,00,00,\
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,48,00,50,00,20,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,\
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6f,00,77,00,73,00,00,00,16,00,56,00,31,00,00,00,00,00,51,44,e8,a9,10,00,53,\
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46,01,00,00,00,01,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,70,00,6f,00,\
77,00,65,00,72,00,73,00,68,00,65,00,6c,00,6c,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,00,\
00,1e,00,00,00,6f,00,00,00,c0,06,00,00,00,00,00,00,16,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
00,00,00,00,16,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,01,00,00,00
"@ | Out-File "$env:temp\desktopToolbar.reg";
reg import "$env:temp\desktopToolbar.reg" | Out-Null;
Get-Process -Id (Get-ProcessByUsername | % { $_.ProcessId | Stop-Process;
}
Comments
Anonymous
February 20, 2014
You can add the desktop taskbar and disable grouping in windows 7 through the ui btwAnonymous
February 21, 2014
The comment has been removed