I just took a look at the code for the area of the tweak program which says it can replace the shell (despite it also saying it's incomplete)...
ShellSwaper.cpp
ShellSwaper.h
Are the two files from the app, after looking at both of them... there is only one complete bit of code in ShellSwapper.cpp:
BOOL ShellSwaper:
nInitDialog()
{
HKEY hkey;
char name[255];
DWORD dwType;
DWORD dwLength;
CDialog:
nInitDialog();
RegOpenKeyEx(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,TEXT("init"
,0,
KEY_ALL_ACCESS,&hkey);
RegQueryValueEx(hkey, TEXT("Launch10"
, NULL, &dwType,(LPBYTE)&name, &dwLength);
RegCloseKey(hkey);
this->SetDlgItemText(IDC_Shellname,LPCTSTR(name));
return TRUE;
}
Evidently, it queries the registry key HKLM\init\Lanuch10, and here it finds the value of "shell.exe" for the value of that key. I guess a shell replacement would have to override this value with the name of another executable acting as the shell.
But I'm still not sure of details regarding what the new shell exe must do in order to work, entry points etc... perhaps is just literally a normal executable.
I also don't seem to be able to find shell.exe on my hpc
/\/\art