Aqua-Soft Forumseveryone knows that a login screen has only a few commands (shutdown, enter password, help) But what if you could control things that are running in windows from the login screen. If anybody likes the idea, its a good login screen to attempt if at all possible. Making buttons for commands such as activate dock or check email when i log on, there could be free spaces for people to put commands in, kind of like tasks but even cooler. well just a thought!
[request] Something Much More Than A Login Screen
For as good as the idea is, unfortunatly it is not possible with any current OS. The login or logon is totally dependant on what the OS allows it to do.
In order for this to be possible, one would have to write a new sub routine for a login application. Unless someone can do this and tie in with the excisting OS's, it can not be done as of yet.
Alright, Understand that what I am about to say comes from the mouth of someone with little to no experince as a programmer.
I used to use Litestep (a shell replacement) and back in the day there were programs that would let you choose which shell you ran so you could run Explorer.exe or Litestep.exe depending on your tastes. If you did not use a "shell manager" you would manually change your system.ini file where the shell = explorer.exe to litestep.exe.
Why couldnt a programmer write a log in program that works exactly like OSX and have it load in the system.ini file in place of explorer.exe (people used to do this with Bleem a PSX emulator to make it run as fast as possible).
Then the program could run explorer once a user was chosen and also initate the files needed to load a users individual settings...dont know what these are but this should be possible.
Anyone know why this wouldn't work?....or would?
just my 1 cent... 
Zoggynog, what you are referring to is a shell loader then. The shell loader runs after log-in and not before.
Why couldnt you set up only one user and create user managment in the program? (here again...talking from my rump)
With only one user selected this would be the first thing you would get to...instead or going straight to the desktop enviroment. Maybe there is a way to choose a default account to always load on startup (even though there are other users)...then have the program allow you to choose a profile to load.
Just throwing out useless ideas....
trying to use a 3rd party program to manage user accounts would
probobly upset windows..
if you want to say...
run the dock, when you logon..
why not make a script that runs it at user logon..
or, if you want you mail to come up, do the same thing..
there are ways to have things launch like that.
but, as for running things from the logon screen..
that's a no-go in all versions of windows..
when you are at the logonscreen, you are not in User Mode..
so you can't run programs, or change any settings.
if you could , this would cause MAJOR security issues..
I remember a few years ago, our school network was running NT4 and when at the user login screen if you pressed the start button a run dialog popped up and you could run progs that were otherwise not allowed. If that isn't a security issue then I don't know what is...