Controlling Charms...

Superfly

Developer
VIP Member
Guru
Messages
1,099
Location
Cape Town
After an initial attempt here at getting to grips with the Charms bar being an intrusion... I dug a bit deeper and did some alternate coding on disabling Charms...(primarily as the current solution causes a flash of the foreground window's title bar when Charms gets hidden)

First I tried killing the Charms process itself - but Windows explorer went nuts and restarted itself (with Charms - further proof that Charms is fully integrated therein)

I have thus far not found a way to deactivate Charms without some negative effect .. I recoded the method to hide the Charms bar but this removes focus from the foreground window and requires adddition user interaction (tap/click the current window to re-focus)

See the code below... NB: uncommenting the SendMessage line (and commenting out the SetWindowsPos line gives the flash effect - i.e moves focus back to the initial window)

Code:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Threading;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace NoCharm
{

   class Program
    {

        [DllImport("user32.dll", EntryPoint = "FindWindow", SetLastError = true)]
        static extern IntPtr FindWindowByCaption(IntPtr ZeroOnly, string lpWindowName);

        [DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, ExactSpelling = true)]
        private static extern short GetKeyState(int keyCode); // Will be used to re-enable Win+C

        [DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
        public static extern int SendMessage(IntPtr hWnd,int msg, int wParam, int lParam);

        [DllImport("user32.dll", EntryPoint = "SetWindowPos")]
        static extern bool SetWindowPos(
             int hWnd,             // Window handle
             int hWndInsertAfter,  // Placement-order handle
             int X,                // Horizontal position
             int Y,                // Vertical position
             int cx,               // Width
             int cy,               // Height
             uint uFlags);         // Window positioning flags

        public const int WM_SYSCOMMAND = 0x0112;
        public const int SC_CLOSE = 0xF060;
        public const int SC_MINIMIZE = 0xF020;  //used with WM_SYSCOMMAND has the same effect as SetWindowPos and SMP_NOMOVE  
        public const uint SWP_NOMOVE = 0x0002 ;

         static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            try
                {
                    while (true)
                    {
                       IntPtr hWndCharmBar = FindWindowByCaption(IntPtr.Zero, "Charm Bar");
                       IntPtr hWndCharmClock = FindWindowByCaption(IntPtr.Zero, "Clock and Date");
                       SetWindowPos((int)hWndCharmBar,0, 0, 0, 0, 0, SWP_NOMOVE);
                       //SendMessage(hWndCharmClock, WM_SYSCOMMAND, SC_CLOSE, 0);
                       //SendMessage(hWndCharmBar, WM_SYSCOMMAND, SC_CLOSE, 0);
                       Thread.Sleep(10); // sleep to save CPU resources... uses 0% CPU and 1.7 MB RAM
                    }
                }
            catch (Exception ex)
                {
                MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);
                }
            Process.GetCurrentProcess().WaitForExit();
        }
    }
}

Download binary.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    PC-DOS v1.0
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    IBM
    CPU
    Intel 8088, 4.77MHz
    Memory
    16K, 640K max
    Graphics Card(s)
    What's that?
    Sound Card
    Not quite
    Screen Resolution
    80 X 24 text
    Hard Drives
    dual 160KB 5.25-inch disk drives

Superfly

Developer
VIP Member
Guru
Messages
1,099
Location
Cape Town
Ya that's the basic stuff... there are drivers that do not disable the right swipe...
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    PC-DOS v1.0
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    IBM
    CPU
    Intel 8088, 4.77MHz
    Memory
    16K, 640K max
    Graphics Card(s)
    What's that?
    Sound Card
    Not quite
    Screen Resolution
    80 X 24 text
    Hard Drives
    dual 160KB 5.25-inch disk drives
Top