GameEx won't shut down

[bkenobi]

I have both of my cabs shelled out with GameEx. I set each up with the concurrent login hacks for XP to re-enable remote login correctly. When I login remotely to manage my machine, if I decide locally to shut down, GameEx just sits there. What's happening is that there's a dialog in the background that says something like

"Hey dummy, there's someone else using your box. Do you really want to kick them off? Yes/No"

What I'm wondering is if there's a way to have Instant Sheller or GameEx help deal with this? If I say shut down locally, I mean it. Currently, I have to find the keyboard to alt-tab to the message box and hit 'ok' before it will shut down. Just curious?

I didn't want to add a feature request until I thought it was a good request (and a GameEx request).

Comments/suggestions?

[Brian Hoffman]

I have both of my cabs shelled out with GameEx. I set each up with the concurrent login hacks for XP to re-enable remote login correctly. When I login remotely to manage my machine, if I decide locally to shut down, GameEx just sits there. What's happening is that there's a dialog in the background that says something like

"Hey dummy, there's someone else using your box. Do you really want to kick them off? Yes/No"

What I'm wondering is if there's a way to have Instant Sheller or GameEx help deal with this? If I say shut down locally, I mean it. Currently, I have to find the keyboard to alt-tab to the message box and hit 'ok' before it will shut down. Just curious?

I didn't want to add a feature request until I thought it was a good request (and a GameEx request).

Comments/suggestions?

have you seen this

http://www.beyondlogic.org/solutions/remot.../BeyondExec.htm

[bkenobi]

That's an interesting application, but it doesn't appear to do what I need. I have my machines set up so that they can be turned on locally and go straight into GameEx since they are shelled. When I need to do maintenance, I typically will then go to my main PC and login remotely to do what I want. The problem is that if I forget to logout prior to shutting down the cabinet, there is a warning message that displays indicating that another user is logged on. All I want to do really is disable that warning. Perhaps there's another way to do it with that application, but I didn't see it.

This is a discussion of what I'm trying to do and a possible solution. I'm going to check it out, but I'm out of town for the next week. I'm just posting it here so that I don't forget about what and where I saw it. If someone else wants to figure it out in the interim, I would not complain

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-2688069.php

[Tempest]

How about this? http://www.download.com/Force-Shutdown/300...4-10071175.html

or...

Hi don't know the reg edit for the message but here what i found on the net and did to shutdown quick ,create a new shortcut on you desk to and put this in when asked ,

%windir%\system32\shutdown.exe -s -t 00

,this will create a quick shutdown icon ,use it to turn off computer

[mightypeniz]

shutdown.exe is indeed what you're after, dude. just add a -f in there, that switch forces all running apps/prompts to close.

to shut down your cabinet PC from remote:

shutdown.exe -s -m \\arcadepc -t 5 -f -c "shut down you bastard"

or locally:

shutdown.exe -s -t 5 -f -c "shut down you bastard"

[bkenobi]

I appreciate the input. I've used most of these techniques outside of my cabs, but not with them. The problem is that I'm not trying to shut down the machine remotely or locally from the desktop/command line. What I'm trying to do is have GameEx shut down when I select "shut down" from the normal controls inside GameEx. If I login remotely and am still logged in when GameEx goes to shut down, it will put a confirmation dialog in the background. I guess what I really want is a way to have Windows hide that message quickly or a way for GameEx to shutdown when I tell it to. I think the best way would be for the shut down item in the list do a forced shut down rather than a normal one that waits for dialogs to be dealt with. I could even use a command with launch at shutdown or something, I just don't know what to launch yet.

[Stub]

So are you running Server 2000-2003 with gameex? Do you have any issues with emus?

[bkenobi]

No, I'm running WinXP Pro with the concurrent login hack to allow multiple logins at the same time. I can then turn on the arcade and it looks like normal, then go upstairs and admin via a remote desktop session (with it's own session, not the one running on the arcade's display). The problem is that if I forget that I'm logged on upstairs and I go to shut it down, it just sits there indefinitely. I hit Ctl-Alt-Del and it pops up the task manager screen with a warning dialog in front stating that someone else is logged on, so do I want to continue shutting down.

I think I've come up with a work around, but it's not super clean. For launch before exit don't wait, I put:

shutdown.exe -f -t 15 -c "system is goin' down!"

This should shut the machine down if it's sitting there holding for the dialog. I still have to run a few more tests to say that it works for certain though. I was initially hoping there was a registry entry for that dialog that could be set to have it time-out after a couple seconds. Unfortunately, I haven't found anything that will do that (probably because XP doesn't support multiple logins natively, so a hack would be required there too...

[bkenobi]

For those that might be interested in setting up their systems to do concurrent sessions like I have set up (I received a few requests for more info), here's some help.

I originally set this up using Win XP Pro SP2. When I just google searched for "concurrent xp session" I found that SP3 breaks the original patch/hack. There is another version that should work on SP3 here. The version I installed actually had an installer, but since I suspect most people won't be installing SP2 any more, I won't try to track down the exact version I used (there's many guides though, so it shouldn't be needed).

[Tom Speirs]

GameEx currently does not "force" shutdown. Its easy for it to do that though. Just need a setting for it. Ill see what I can do.

[bkenobi]

That would be awesome! I've tried a bunch of things, but the dialog I described above seems to keep anything from working. I'm going to keep looking into this for a bit just in case the forced shutdown doesn't fix this one instance.

[bkenobi]

Just a little update. I think I have verified that using a command to force a shutdown should work. What I did was to put "shutdown.exe -f -s" in the "LaunchOnExit=" line. Then I enabled the GameEx Exit menu item (so it would normally just go back to windows). When I select Exit, it gives me the dialog stating that the pc will be shutdown in 30 seconds (since I didn't specify a time). Normally, GameEx instantiates the shutdown before the call of shutdown.exe and thus the warning dialog pops up. Once that dialog is up, the user must manually kill it.

The solution would be for GameEx to use a forced shutdown switch when it calls for a shutdown. This should keep the dialog from preventing things from continuing.

Thanks for looking into this Tom!