Start Up Full Screen with Win 7

[SteveB69]

Running Win 7, I have added Pinball.exe to the Start Up folder & told it to run full screen.

However upon load it runs full screen then minimizes itself?

[Tom Speirs]

It does this on my cab too. I just wrote a little batch file that launches instead, pauses for about 10 seconds then launches PinballX. Its because some other app or windows notification steels focus as pinballx is starting up.

Here is my .bat file in the pinballx folder:

c:
cd c:\pinballx
sleep
sleep
pinballx

Sleep.exe is included with GameEx but there are other similar things out there.

Edit: I've attached sleep.exe although its nothing really special.

Sleep.zip

[Lyanheart]

At least yours starts... I put pinballx in my startup folder and it started correctly once. Each time I've started the machine since, it ignores it. Is it possible to include something as part of the setup program to check pinballx to automatically start when windows does? I know, I know, tossing a shortcut into the startup folder SHOULD do it, but mine doesn't like it I guess.

[SteveB69]

Quick reply

Erm, I copy your above text to a new text file. I rename it something.bat & drop it in the Pinballx folder?

[Tom Speirs]

  On 7/14/2013 at 11:06 PM, Lyanheart said:

At least yours starts... I put pinballx in my startup folder and it started correctly once. Each time I've started the machine since, it ignores it. Is it possible to include something as part of the setup program to check pinballx to automatically start when windows does? I know, I know, tossing a shortcut into the startup folder SHOULD do it, but mine doesn't like it I guess.

It appeared not to start on mine either. PinballX exits quietly if it has an error. Check the log and I am sure that is the case. It probably couldn't initialize the display. Try my fix.

[Tom Speirs]

  On 7/14/2013 at 11:07 PM, SteveB69 said:

Quick reply

Erm, I copy your above text to a new text file. I rename it something.bat & drop it in the Pinballx folder?

Yep, you got it.

[Tom Speirs]

Here is both the batch file and sleep.exe in a single zip file attached. Just put in your pinballx folder and set the .bat file to startup instead of pinballx.

PinballX.zip

[Tom Speirs]

Ill try to make something more user friendly for a future release.

[Lyanheart]

That does the trick. I was able to take out one of the sleeps and the timing is just right.

[SteveB69]

Perfecto, if only DMD displays were just as easy!!!

[SteveB69]

Update on this Tom.

I'm finding that sometimes PinballX will start pefectly on win 7 starting, sometimes it will start & minimise, I guess win is loading other stuff still, is there a way to delay it starting a bit longer?

Also is it possible for PinballX to start this way but without playing the music of whatever table was last loaded, but only on startup start, not on regular use, if you follow??

[SteveB69]

Nother update, PinballX loaded from a fresh boot, full screen,played the theme of the last table that had been loaded & then minimised at the end of the theme.

The pxlaunch.bat window taking focus on a win desktop?

[Tom Speirs]

Its normal for the window to display. You can add additional lines with "sleep" for more of a delay.

Could you explain what the issue is with the sounds and why you would like this?

[SteveB69]

Ahh more sleep, what a nice phrase!!

Re the sound, what I mean is we come out to our man caves / dens / places women are not allowed & switch on our pinball cabs.

What I'd like is for PinballX to autoload with windows but play no music of whatever table is on the screen. Its not until you are in front of the cab & you switch to the next table does any table sound play??

[SteveB69]

Ahh have solved my own problem.

If I replace the default pinball wizard tune with a 2 second silent wav or mp3 of my own, upon start up PinballX will load that wav & then when I go to use the machine & browse tables their own sounds will play :-)

[SteveB69]

Strange, the bat fle you attached earlier completly doesn't do anything.

its in my start up folder but nothing starts up, the bat file looks like this.

c:

cd c:\pinballx

sleep

sleep

pinballx

pxlaunch.bat I have in my c:/pinballx/ folder as a shortcut

Any ideas?

[punter1]

Add pause to the end of the batch file, and let us know what error it reports.

c:

cd c:\pinballx

sleep

sleep

pinballx

pause

Also, what happens when you double click on pxlaunch.bat.

[SteveB69]

IGNORE ME, I'm stupid, the bat file shortcut was pointing to the wrong location.

I shall now go & flog myself!