Projekte von Christian Zeitnitz
In Windows Vista and Windows 7 a Mobility Center is available from the control panel or by the shortcut win+x. The Mobility Center contains so-called tiles to control the hard- and software of a laptop, e.g. screen brightness, speaker volume, wireless LAN device.
Custom tiles are usually available from laptop producers.
This description assumes a Lenovo Thinkpad and that the Lenovo Hotkey software for the Thinkpad is installed, but the method works for arbitrary commands on any laptop or PC. The example utilizes the functionality of the Fn+F5 wireless device control. The picture on the right shows the four tiles (above the ThinkLight Tile) which show up when the example is installed. These tiles allow to switch the internal wireless WAN, LAN, Bluetooth on and off. In addition all devices can be switched on and off at once. All tiles are so-called static tiles. This means, that pressing the button always triggers the same action (command). A click on the icon triggers a second command. No status information can be displayed. For desktop PCs the Mobility Center is disabled. See the detailed instructions how to enable it for a desktop machine.
All custom tiles are implemented by adding keys to the Windows registry under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\MobilePC\MobilityCenter\Tiles. In the case of a static tile the sub-keys define the look and the commands to be triggered when clicking on the button or the icon.
In addition to the registry entries a file (.exe or .dll) is required which contains the string and icon resources. Any command can be triggered. In the example the executable %ProgramFiles%\Lenovo\HOTKEYS\TPFnF5.exe is called with the corresponding parameter to switch a specific wireless device on or off.
Read the detailed instructions for details.
All the information and the enclosed files are made available as is. Modifiying the registry can damage your Windows installation. So use and modify this example at your own risk!