can cygwin replace explorer.exe?

[e980238]

I was wondering if there was a way that cygwin could possibley replace explorer.exe? I have X installed and working under cygwin on windows XP and I thought it would be cool to just have X and not explorer running. Any ideas?

[joker_927]

I'm lost.

[e980238]

cygwin is a unix environment for windows.

I believe you have to load it as a Kernel in the "boot.ini" file.

Open "boot.ini" w/ Notepad.exe, copy the line under [operating systems], mine looks like this, "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Wind ows XP Pro" /fastdetect", yours will probably be a little different. Paste is under the one that's currently there and add "kernel=pathtocygwin.dll" Change the part after the "=" to someting unique, like "Windows XP Pro X"

In the end it should look something like . . .

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Windo ws XP Pro" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Windo ws XP Pro X" /fastdetect /kernel=c:\cygwin\cygwin.dll

To make your "X" as the default, I believe you just need to change the order under [operating systems] to which one you want to boot first since they're both booting from the same partition.