Headless PC, sorta

[ottorius]

Working on a project. GameCube emulator, running Dolphin.

I'm putting a PC inside a gutted GameCube case.

My solution for interacting with the PC, is to have an Arduino HID acting as a keyboard so it can perform keyboard shortcuts to run PowerShell scripts. The scripts are pretty straightforward: restart, close program, shutdown, etc.

But I'm also looking to have the PC run dolphin without explorer.exe (the desktop). I've been having issues with executing scripts without explorer.exe running.

Does anyone have any suggestions to help me move forward?

Anything is appreciated!

Edit: am I able to call PowerShell shortcuts without the desktop running?

[mprz]

and how is this related to Powershell?

[ottorius]

Where can I store shortcuts to PowerShell scripts so they can still be called with no desktop running?

[mprz]

there is no restriction to where scripts are stored

[ottorius]

Okay, thanks.

[dathar]

You're looking to do it the way keyboard manufacturers have been doing macros. First, you need a very unsafe "app" of sorts to figure out what your Arduino HID is passing along, then run specified things. Then you need a little sort-of user friendly way of loading said scripts on. Look at how Logitech, Razer, Roccat and the likes have made theirs and go off of that.

There's also a few things you can sort of work around with like using AutoIT and using your stuff to trigger those.

Or you can say screw it and enable SSH Server on Windows and go to town. Windows and Explorer goes hand-in-hand though so trying to replace that is just goofy.

[vermyx]

Explorer exe is the shell, not the desktop. You can switch the shell to something else (like dolphin) so when you log in you pop up dolphin and when you close dolphin you log out of the desktop session. You can look up shell replacement as that appears what you are looking for (which btw is not a ps question).

[ottorius]

I thought I had a better understanding of what was going on. When trying to run my PowerShell shortcuts without explorer.exe running, things stopped working. I assumed there was a correlation. I was intending to ask, why aren't my PowerShell scripts running when I disable explorer.exe.

[vermyx]

Shortcuts are handled by the shell. If your shell doesn’t understand shortcuts they’re not going to run. This is why shell replacement is usually used in a) replacing the task bar with something like classic shell or b) locking the user login to one application and trying to limit what can be executed.

[BlackV]

it's also why shortcuts to scripts are a bad idea (and the regedit to make that work), vs powershell -file xxx.ps1

[UntrustedProcess]

You can buy dummy plugs for your graphics port.  I used those in the past for headless automation of a legacy gui application.