Professional Windows® Embedded Compact 7

CONFIGURING THE REGISTRY TO AUTO LAUNCH AN APPLICATION

The Compact 7 system registry plays a key role in controlling the OS run-time image’s startup process, launching device drivers and applications during startup.

As the Compact 7 OS run-time image launches, during the startup process, the system scans the HKLM\Init registry key, looking for Launchxx entries and launches the associated application in numerical order, going from the lowest number to the highest number. For each Launchxx entry, a corresponding Dependxx entry contains information about the application’s dependency, such as the following:

 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Init]
    "Launch90"="App1.exe"
    "Depend90"=hex:0a,00,14,00

Understanding the Compact 7 Startup Registry

To configure the Compact 7 registry to auto launch an application during startup, you need to understand how the Compact 7 OS uses the system registry to launch core OS components, which your application is dependent on.

During an OS design project’s build process, all the registry entries from different components, configured to be part of the OS design, are merged into the REGINIT.INI file in the build release directory, to be compiled as part of the final OS run-time image. To review registry entries for a Compact 7 OS run-time image generated from an OS design project, the REGINIT.INI file is the best place to look.

Using the MyVPC OS design project from the exercise in Chapter19, “Platform Builder Native Code Application Example,” as an example, searching ...