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cschneegans / unattend-generator

.NET Core library to create highly customized autounattend.xml files
https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/
MIT License
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[FeatureRequest] Disable Windows Spotlight Background #44

Closed Hammerfest closed 2 months ago

Hammerfest commented 2 months ago

With the new 261xx builds, it defaults spotlight to the background and is annoying.

Any thoughts on possibility to disable windows spotlight and set a solid color as background?

cschneegans commented 2 months ago

I usually test with 24H2 builds, but I have not seen Windows spotlight so far. This might be because I typically use generic product keys and don't activate my installations so the Personalization settings screen is largely disabled, or because Windows determines that my VM does not have the required graphics capabilities.

Anyway, this answer on serverfault.com describes three registry values that need to be set:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Wallpapers]
"BackgroundType"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"WallPaper"=""

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors]
"Background"="0 0 0"

The problem is that these settings take effect only after logging off and on again. Surprisingly, killing explorer.exe is not sufficient. Setting these values in the default user's hive C:\Users\Default\NTUSER.DAT has no effect either.

Therefore, the user experience is quite poor, and I would prefer not to include that feature. This might change when there is a way to make these settings take effect immediately.

Feel free to use a .reg file in the Scripts to run whenever a user logs on for the first time section with the registry values shown above.

Hammerfest commented 2 months ago

Give a gander here: https://r-pufky.github.io/docs/operating-systems/windows/10/1903/disable-spotlight.html

I've taken quite a few different disable bits here and stuffed it into my windows decrapifier script I got from csand over on spiceworks

Using your tool I am trying to get away from that as much as possible by having things done pre user land or first login.

Not worried if its not possible.

cschneegans commented 2 months ago

Added option to set a solid wallpaper color via https://github.com/cschneegans/unattend-generator/commit/d59a6fb10c6c6799d69f5f3d46fe3db13e83c7eb:

image

Fortunately, I found a way to set the wallpaper color without killing explorer.exe or logging off and on again; see SetWallpaper.ps1 for the implementation. As stated above, I have not seen Windows spotlight on my VMs so far, hence I cannot verify (but I assume) that this setting will override spotlight as well.