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How to hide the "Program Manager" icon on the Windows 3.1 desktop?

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First post, by Kahenraz

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I'm making a little loader for DOSBox which will startup Civilization for Windows automatically. I'm using this in combination with runexit.exe so the OS will quit and DOSBox will close when the game is exited.

When the game starts up, it isn't full-screen. So you can see the "Program Manager" icon on the desktop. This is unnecessary and ruins an otherwise seamless experience.

Does anyone know of a way to setup Windows 3.1 so that this icon isn't visible on the desktop?

I tried setting "shell=progman.exe" to "shell=" in win.ini but then the OS won't load at all.

I prefer the Civilization for Windows release as it has better resolution than the DOS one.

Reply 1 of 3, by yourepicfailure

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You can set the shell parameter to point to the game exe.

Reply 2 of 3, by yawetaG

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Or move the icon to the middle of the screen.

Reply 3 of 3, by Jo22

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Kahenraz wrote:

I tried setting "shell=progman.exe" to "shell=" in win.ini but then the OS won't load at all.

yourepicfailure wrote:

You can set the shell parameter to point to the game exe.

Yes, that should work. From what I remember (I'll have to double-check), the Internet Archive does use the same method for Win 3.x shareware/freeware games.

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