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[Help] Rainmeter does not load all Skins on Startup

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strykor
Posts: 16
Joined: February 6th, 2013, 7:02 pm

Re: [Help] Rainmeter does not load all Skins on Startup

Post by strykor »

Thank you all,
I will look at it, when I got the time and try it out. (:
Thanks for the support, this Forum is great!
NorthPew
Posts: 1
Joined: July 24th, 2017, 9:05 pm
Location: Sweden

Re: [Help] Rainmeter does not load all Skins on Startup

Post by NorthPew »

jsmorley wrote:There are any number of ways you could cobble something together, but the trick is to do something that is reasonably simple and is smart enough to only do its thing once when the computer is restarted, and not on every refresh of Rainmeter or loading of a Layout or other times. An endless loop of refreshes would be easy to stumble into. You can't use "uptime" as Windows 8 handles that differently.

My gut reaction if you really don't want to use some external utility like Startup Delayer would be to create a simple invisible skin that uses the new INTERNET_CONNECTIVITY option in the SysInfo plugin to check for internet connectivity. It would simply check once a second, and as soon as the result changed from -1 to 1, it would use a !LoadLayout bang to load a saved Layout with the actual setup you want.

So:

1) Save a Layout of your current "real" setup in Manage / Layout. Let's call it "MySetup".
2) Create another Layout, checking the "Save as an empty layout" box before you save it. Call this one "Startup".
3) Load that new "Startup" Layout. You will have no skins loaded.
4) Create the little "startup" skin with the SysInfo measure in it. Let's call it "DelayUntilNet".
5) Temporarily comment out the bang that loads the "real" Layout, so you can:
6) Load just this "DelayUntilNet" skin.
7) Again save how things are now as the Layout "Startup". Now you have two Layouts, "MySetup" (with all your real skins) and "Startup" with just that DelayUntilNet skin.
8) Load the Layout "MySetup".
9) Edit the "DelayUntilNet" skin and put back the bang that makes it functional. Don't load it though.
10) In Windows, find the shortcut for Rainmeter that is in your Startup folder. This is in "C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup"
11) Right click this shortcut and select "Properties".
12) Edit the "Target" field and add a !LoadLayout bang to the end of it. So something like "C:\Program Files\Rainmeter\Rainmeter.exe" !LoadLayout Startup

That's about it.

Now when your computer restarts (and only when it restarts) Rainmeter will be started (as it always did) but with that "Startup" Layout loaded. That will load our "DelayUntilNet" skin and nothing else. No Rainmeter skins will be on the screen.

As soon as that "DelayUntilNet" skin sees that there is an internet connection, it will load the "MySetup" Layout, which is all your regular skins. The "DelayUntilNet" skin is not included in that Layout, so it is unloaded and will only be activated again when you reboot.

You are also going to want be sure to keep your "MySetup" Layout "up-to-date" as you make changes in Rainmeter, so you don't end up saying "goddammit!" every time you reboot.

There are probably other ways as well, but as you can see, it's going to be a fair amount of effort just to avoid using something external like that Startup Delayer. Up to you of course.
Hi, sorry for asking this and I am a newbie on coding RainMeter skins.
I'm trying to make a skin that displays a grey box, Account Image and a text "Welcome %USERNAME% !".
After some seconds it fades away (inactivates).
I want to do like this you are talking about in the quote but I don't understand nothing what you are saying.
I made a Layout in AppData/Roaming/RainMeter/Layouts/Welco (name of the skin)
but I don't understand how I do with DelayUnitNet where it should be, should it be in a new folder outside Welco or inside
the Welco folder?
And I don't know what I will do next with the DelayUnitNet, how I do so it will call the Welco.ini :?
Can you tell me please and I don't know if I understanded all :-(
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eclectic-tech
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Re: [Help] Rainmeter does not load all Skins on Startup

Post by eclectic-tech »

NorthPew wrote:Hi, sorry for asking this and I am a newbie on coding RainMeter skins.
I'm trying to make a skin that displays a grey box, Account Image and a text "Welcome %USERNAME% !".
After some seconds it fades away (inactivates).
I want to do like this you are talking about in the quote but I don't understand nothing what you are saying.
I made a Layout in AppData/Roaming/RainMeter/Layouts/Welco (name of the skin)
but I don't understand how I do with DelayUnitNet where it should be, should it be in a new folder outside Welco or inside
the Welco folder?
And I don't know what I will do next with the DelayUnitNet, how I do so it will call the Welco.ini :?
Can you tell me please and I don't know if I understanded all :-(
This is not the process you want... :uhuh:

You could look at a similar request made here: https://forum.rainmeter.net/viewtopic.php?p=138211#p138211, it will create a display at startup that will show for 10 seconds then disappear... which is what you are asking for :)
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