ReactOS taskbar + Win10 desktop + Classic Shell

When I try to run the file I get Failed to launch program, path to ros explorer, Specifically: The system cannot find the file specified. I'm not sure what I'm missing here, ros explorer is running and I installed the source file with the build environment.

Hi Spitfire,
I'm trying to get this set-up, but I don't know where to start or what to do.
Would you be able to give me a run-down?

I installed RosBE, so that's taken care of.
I ran your explorer_old file and ended up with a wonky-looking overlayed taskbar. heh heh.

Do I need to install ReactOS or something, too?

=====
Update:
I already had Classic Shell installed from before, fyi.

From here I'm guessing I do the following:
Install ReactOS,
Replace all the files in it's program files directory with your explorer-old subfolder package,
Make Autohotkey script and copy/paste your script into it,
Add the locations for the start button pictures,
Add the location of explorer_old.exe

I hope that saved your breath, at least a little bit. I tried running the script without ROS installed, and it gives me an error saying it can't find expoler_old.exe, even though I linked to it properly. I'm guessing explorer_old.exe only works if ROS is installed..

Again, any help with setting this up would be much appreciated!

Thank you Clasurol your version worked perfectly, my taskbar is now looking sexier than ever.

Wow, thank you so much for the help, Clasurol! I didn't realize I needed classic theme for this. I just assumed we were going to use a look-alike interface pulled from ReactOS.

Well, even though it's looking a lot better now, I'm still having some issues:
-The text size is way too small now, and I don't know how to adjust it. ***Fixed: See Edit 4, below.***
-I get an error when I go into the settings tab of the new display properties. It tells me that "the currently selected display driver cannot be used. It is either missing or not properly configured." So, I tried to trouble-shoot this a bit, but can't figure it out. I'm sure once I get it working I can then change my text size, too.
-I get annoying, ghost-like, nameless programs that show up on the taskbar, and they can't be closed. I was at least able to close some sort of "Windows Shell Experience Host" thing by closing it in the task manager.
-Show desktop and windows switcher buttons don't work.
-Classic Shell start menu floats a few pixels too high.
-When I run the automated classic theme script, I'm having an issue where it starts off by listing several errors. I have attached a screenshot of those errors. I'm not sure if this is actually a problem, because, despite the errors, I'm not having any major problems aside from those above.

After fiddling with my exclusion options in Bitdefender, like adding rundll32.exe, wscript.exe and others to the exclusion list, everything seems to be cooperating reasonably, aside from the problems listed above.

Some questions:

;; Uncomment these 2 lines if you want to use Win-X

; Run, rundll32 TaskbarContextMenuTweaker.dll`,Release

; Run, rundll32 TaskbarContextMenuTweaker.dll`,Inject
-What's the purpose of this? I'm under the impression that it will restore the original win10 taskbar if I uncomment these lines and then run the script again. However, after doing so, I just get error message saying "ReactOS Explorer has stopped working."

-Was there actually a purpose to installing the ROSBE and then placing the directory from source-explorer-old.7z into the default directory for ROSBE? Before I properly placed that directory into C:\Users\Username\reactos\, I was able to run the classictheme script and the startbutton script just fine, or so I thought.

Any thoughts on this would be appreciated. Thank you!

Edit:
I was reading about your clock fix and then noticed the part about the clicky gone program! I'll check that out!

Edit 2: Clicky Gone won't hide items on the taskbar! XD

Edit 3: I was able to get the regular clock to display in AM/PM mode by right-clicking it and going into some menus. The only problem for me is that the "M" in "PM" is mostly cut-off from the screen...

Edit 4: Given that I'm using a laptop with a small screen that can output in 1920x1080, I run everything to be 150% larger, so the GUI and text are larger. I discovered that I have to scale my display back to 100% before enabling the Classic Theme script! This way, after Classic Theme is applied, I can then go in and crank up my display scaling to 150%, otherwise, fiddling with the scaling after the fact does nothing to the text. If I recall correctly, if I log out and then back in again at 150%, then load up the Start Button script, the taskbar's bottom border rides up higher, out of proportion, for some reason. And it can't be fixed unless I disable and then enable CT script again! Such silly idiosyncrasies! Looks like I'll have to get creative like you guys and automate things myself somehow so I don't have to keep fiddling with all this. Maybe I could somehow edit the classic Theme bat file to change my scaling before it applies changes...

Thank you for the comprehensive answers, conformations, and replies, Clasurol.
I have been fiddling around with Taskbar Hide, now. I've had more success with this than with Clicky Gone. However, I haven't been able to get it to run on start-up, and it doesn't appear to save my settings. So, it's been sortta useless to me. But, I'm going to see if I can find a way to force it to run on start-up, maybe using a batch file to run it. Setting up a scheduled task doesn't appear to work, and neither does going into the program's settings. I'll also try adding it to the start-up folder as well.  Not sure how I'll get it to save my settings... Maybe there's a way to pass some instructions to it using a batch file or something. lol.

I've toyed around with DS Clock a bit now, and I like how easy it is to use, but honestly, the 24hr clock doesn't bother me enough to justify having a program overlayed on the taskbar to fake the time. Perhaps if I get it looking the way I want it then I'll keep using it! What's the classic Windows font? MS Sans Serif?

I ended up ditching this approach and found another solution! After thinking about the new (well, old...) display settings link and it's limitations, I went back in there and adjusted the scheme in the appearance tab to Windows Classic (large). This, coupled with a slightly lower screen resolution resulted in a happy medium for me!  This experimentation segways into another part of my journey to automate all this, which I'll outline next.

So, I noticed that when I log back into Windows with the automated Classic Theme script applied, I now lose the dark grey bar at the bottom of the taskbar that adds to its embossing effect. I discovered that to mitigate this, I had to switch my resolution to anything but what I was using, and then back to my regular resolution. To automate this at start-up, I downloaded a little program called Display Changer II and created two batch files for it. The first saves the display's current settings (with a resolution you don't intend to use) to an xml file which I've called "Temp_Res.xml" and the other script, Switch_Res.bat, temporarily loads that xml file and then immediately switches back to the previous display settings (the settings you prefer), so, when used, it sort of makes your screen spasm for a second. Here it is, below:

timeout /t 4 /nobreak

"C:\Classic\Display Changer II\dc2.exe" -configure="C:\Classic\Display Changer II\Temp_Res.xml" -temporary

"C:\Classic\Display Changer II\dc2.exe" -restore

exit
I figured I should automate the taskbar to load up at start-up as well, so I wrote this batch script:
timeout /t 3 /nobreak

start "C:\Program Files\AutoHotkey\AutoHotkey.exe" "C:\Classic\StartButton\StartButton.ahk"

exit
Next, I tried to figure out the best way to make these 2 scripts run at start-up. I found that placing their shortcuts into the start-up folder or scheduling them to run were both really slow to start up! Especially when compared the automated CT bat file! If I wanted to carry on using the method I was currently using, then, from what I understand, the only way I could find to make them run faster would be to remove all the current program's start-up settings from the registry and then creating numbered, ordered shortcuts for them in the start-up folder, further down in sequence than my batch files. I was neither willing to go through all this work or even sure that it would work in the first place! So, instead, I took the approach of trying to append my batch files to 6sicsix's Auto CT script! 

6sicsix generously made a location in his script for users to place programs to run before Classic Theme is enabled, so this was the only place I could run my scripts from with any kind of success: 
:loginelevated

:: ##############################  NON-CLASSIC STARTUP (ADMIN) START ##############################

:: Programs to run before classic theme is enabled go here (runs with elevated permissions)

start cmd /k call "C:\Classic\Taskbar_Timer.bat"

start cmd /k call "C:\Classic\Display Changer II\Switch_Res.bat"For the sake of completion, I will also add these instructions to the loginnonelevated portion of the script, as well. 

Because this program list runs before CT is enabled, in order to have my scripts apply themselves properly, I added timeouts to them so that they effectively wait for Classic Theme to be enabled, even though they start up beforehand. I'm still experimenting with it, but it's working out not too terribly! I might reach out to 6sicsix to see where an appropriate place in his script would be to make my batch files run properly after Classic Theme is enabled. That way I could do away with the timers. In fact, I think I could ,at the very least, integrate the Display Changer II switcher script into the Taskbar_Timer script so that the resolution switch occurs below, in sequence, to the autohotkey start button line of code. All that depends on if the taskbar loads in time before the display changer script kicks in. I'm doubting it. But I'll still look into combining them and then perhaps see if the timeout command can only be fed natural numbers or if I can feed it 0 and positive real numbers. That would help tighten things up.

I could have added a timer to StartButton.ahk script, but I felt it was best to leave others' scripts alone, if possible. This way, down the road, I know what I've done, myself, versus what I had to gather from this forum.

Moving forward, after all this loads up on login, one problem that persists for me is this error: 
I'm not sure which script it's coming from.

On a side note, did you notice that with each disabling/enabling of the Classic Theme script, it loaded up slower and slower with each use? I'm not talking the script loading up at login if it's enabled, just when you're turning it off and then on again.

Spitfire wrote:
Thanks for the reply, Spitfire. I enabled that part of the script to see if it changed anything, and it made the right click menu appear less "Windows 10-y" to me thanks to the colour differing from the dark metro theme I was running. It's a lighter shade of grey than my taskbar and doesn't have that signature Classic Theme embossed menu look as I believe it's still part of the Win 10 UI, but at least it sort of matches my colour scheme better than before. And thanks for the explanation about the old ReactOS being obsolete. That explains a lot. heh heh. Well, lets see what happens next on this forum. Still, though I'm honestly pretty happy with your work, despite the problems! It's the closest I've seen to a proper Classic taskbar on Windows 10. I was worried I'd have to go back to Windows 7 to get a taste of the old Classic Theme again! As much as I love Windows 7 (never had Win 8), we all know that it's inevitable that one day Microsoft will stop supporting it. What are most people running on this forum, Windows 8 or 8.1? I forget in which version Microsoft made it a pain to run Classic Theme.

I use Windows Server 2016 here and tried the ClassicTheme stuff and the Reactos TAskbar etc. and while it does work to some extent it's not really useful for an OS that would be used on a daily basis, only as a proof of concept maybe.
The computer becomes extremely sluggish when all of these little extra thingies are doing its job and the classictheme being recognized as a virus isn't very convincing either (yes, i know it is said that it's not a virus)
But please don't get me wrong, I appreciate all your effort and I've been watching these classic theme things since the release of Windows 8 but I think with Windows 10 I've kinda lost my hope that there will be a nice and useful alternative to this ugly Windows 10 look but I'm afraid it's no longer feasible, at least not for an OS you'd actually want to use.

(yes I know that Windows Server 2016 isn't Windows 10 but it's based on Windows 10)

Hmmm, that's interesting. Have you managed to figure out how to add shortcuts to that secondary tray that the ReactOS Taskbar uses, the one with the non-functioning "Show Desktop" button? Mine had Winamp on it as well before I deleted it, since I use Winamp Agent and that shows up in the System Tray just fine.

Overall things are working well for me with the taskbar, it's just troubleshooting.

Thanks for the tip on netsetman. There's a shortcut for bringing up the "Connect to a Network" dialog, right now I have it in the Start Menu as a shortcut.

That is correct, unfortunately. I just wanted to atleast ensure that you folks were aware of it to begin with.



Fair enough.