this below is my Geneve.

It's a Geneve created using a Windows 7 PC and MAME.

Here is a bad video I made of the startup procedure.

I stripped Windows 7 of all badging in start up to just a black screen till the MAME kicks in giving the illusion of a real Geneve PC. I added an old IBM keyboard, HP ball mouse and a new NES style joystick to really give it that old-school look. Mouse works, joystick works and all software runs off the 3 internal v-drives. It looks and operates a lot like if MyArc had went with creating a Geneve PC instead of just a card for the PEB.

This blog and subsequent blogs will be a step by step procedure of how-to prepare the Win7 PC by removing badging and other unnecessary stuff and MAME setup. 

I will be breaking up the how-to into multiple blogs to keep the length down.

Now PART 1

Setting up a Win7 PC for Geneve SoftPC.

What you need:

1. PC with Win 7 – one that’s fast enough to run MAME/Geneve, (preferably) has an SSD as the main drive & also (preferably) doesn’t have an irradiating brand logo at startup.

2. Copy of the program ‘Resource Hacker’ (included with blog files).

3. Copy of ‘Take Ownership’ program (included).

4. Copy of ‘Login Studio’ (included).

5. Various registry hacks (included in next blog).

Beginning steps:

1. Load bare bones Windows 7 then add all patches.

2. Use ‘high contrast’ black theme. This clears out some startup graphics.

   

3. Remove all desktop items.

4. Using ‘msconfig’ set to ‘no gui’.

   

5. Turn off any not needed startup items or services that are starting up, also with ‘msconfig’.

6. in ‘system’>’advanced system settings’>’performance’>’settings button’ select to ‘adjust for best performance’.

   

7. Shut off ‘clock’, ‘date’ and any other no needed items in tray items.

8. 

9. Set bottom tray to ‘auto hide’.

10. Shut off all unnecessary services in SERVICES. I even shut off the networking services as they won’t be needed and delay startup by a fraction of a sec.

You now have a fairly clean PC startup. Next is removing the startup screen and startup text, the mouse and few other things.

this will require some registry hacks but that will be in the next blog, part 2.

till then.

Enjoy, HLO

utils for win7 conversion.zip