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Win95/98/ME Service

Hide DF on Win98

The Win2K/NT users have it easy to hide the DF program - they just install it as a service. But the Win98 users are f... well, let's just say they're out of luck... until now!!

Yes, the looney Knights have come up with a little (Little? Did I say little? We're talking 21 KB here folks!!) proggy to properly start and hide DF on Win98 machines When HideDF.exe is started it will look for the foldtrajlite.lock file and delete it if it exists. Then it will start up foldit.bat without any button or icon in the task bar !!!

To get this little gem just download it here. Put the HideDF.exe in the same folder as the rest of the DF files.
Now that you can hide the DOS windows, you need a way to automatically start HideDF on start-up. There are two ways do do this. First, you can create a shortcut in Programs > StartUp to HideDF.exe. But this method is too easy for someone to see and disable. A sneaker way is to modify the Registry to launch HideDF. The procedure for that is right here. It couldn't be easier - well, it couldn't be any harder because sometimes we Knights are not the brightest bulb in the universe.

PLEASE NOTE: There was a bug in the DF Text Client software such that if you killed the client improperly - typically what will happen when running hidden - and then restarted it, it would sometimes just build one structure and exit, requiring you to restart it a second time. This is not good. Howard - aka Brian the Fist - has posted a revised version as of 16 May 2002 on the DF Download site. If you are going to use HideDF, then be sure to get the latest Text Client. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Try it out. If you have any questions, post them in the KWSN bulletin board or the DF Forum at Free-DC

This is the complete source code to HideDF written in VB 6.0. If anyone would be willing to convert this to either C++ or C#, I will be happy to post that code also. Enjoy!

Private Sub Form_Load()

Dim RetVal
Dim fso As Scripting.FileSystemObject
Dim fileName As String

' get rid of the lock file if it exists
fileName = "foldtrajlite.lock"
Set fso = New Scripting.FileSystemObject

If fso.FileExists(fileName) Then
    fso.DeleteFile fileName, True
End If

Set fso = Nothing

' now start the bat file
On Error GoTo NoBatFileHandler

RetVal = Shell("foldit.bat", 0)
End

' in case the user installed this in the wrong directory
' and the bat file doesn't exist; give error message box
NoBatFileHandler:

If Err.Number = "53" Then
  MsgBox ("'foldit.bat' does not exist in this directory!"), vbOKOnly + vbCritical, "Error!"
End If
End
  
End Sub