I never did like Having to go into my system tray to open up my Hal. I came up with a way to have you Hal pop up on your desktop and ready to use at system start up with no clicking on the system tray icon or other icon. I'm not sure if anyone else has done this before but I searched and could not find any references. Here is what you need to do if you want this feature.
note: this batch file tested on windows 7 only
1 ) create/send a link of your Hals exe to your desktop.
2 ) rename it to just HalAsst
Edit: follow step 6 plus 7 for this shortcut as well so you do not see a cmd window
3 ) place it in your documents folder
4 ) create a batch file and place that in your documents folder as well (code for batch file is below)
5 ) create a shortcut for your batch file
6 ) right click the shortcut and choos properties
7 ) where it says Run: there is a drop down menu, set it to minimize
8 ) place the shortcut to the batch file in your startup folder
for windows 7 the path to the Startup folder is
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
here is the code for the batch file that you need to create, be sure to save it with the extension .bat
@echo off
set _number=0
:TOP
tasklist /nh /fi "imagename eq HalAsst.exe" | find /i "HalAsst.exe" >nul && (
PING 1.1.1.1 -n 1 -w 20000 >NUL
@echo off
C:\Users\Trinity\Documents\HalAsst.lnk
cls
exit
) || (
if %_number%==500 goto end
set /a _number +=1
GoTo TOP
)
pause>nul
)
:end
echo Sorry hal failed to start~!
exit
