Neowin.net

Neowin received this email this morning from Deron, the same guy who supplied Neowin with the latest Audio Shell player (incl Volume control) heres what he had to say:

I noticed that there was high demand for the Powertoys that MS decided to remove from the FINAL release of the XP Powertoy Set. Even I myself was really dying to still use some of the older Powertoys that they cancelled (like the Shell Audio Player, and the Background Switcher, etc.) So I decided that I would go ahead and create setup files for each of the cancelled Powertoys that I could find and post them all in an easy to install package.

These include:

bgswitch.exe - Background Switcher Powertoy

shplayer.exe - Shell Audio Player

iefind.exe - Internet Explorer Find Bar

Those are the only 3 cancelled Powertoys that are included in this release. If you know of any others that I should include simply give me the suggestion. Also if there are any problems please let me know! - Deron

Download: (Cancelled) Powertoys Set v1.0 From Neowin (151KB)

Here is a list of what is included and some details on each individual file:

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bgswitch.exe - Background Switcher Powertoy
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This powertoy was included with the last beta version of the Powertoys Set. Whenever a user right clicked his desktop and chose properties he could see a new tab which allowed him to enable a "Desktop Slide Show." This would automatically change the Windows Desktop at an interval specified by the user.

This actual realease was ported by me and may or may not work well on all machines. I hope that you have luck with it. If the setup doesn't do anything for you then please let me know so that I can include some fixes in the next release!

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shplayer.exe - Shell Audio Player
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This powertoy has been thrown around on sites ever since the final came out. I would guess that this is the most controversial powertoy that was removed from the final. However, the version that most people have floating around, "SHPlayerInstall.exe" actually came from the very first beta of the Powertoys Set, and was a lot less reliable than the version included here. The version I include is from the last beta version of the Powertoys Set. It also includes the much desired "Show Volume Button" option.

You access the Shell Audio Player by installing the file, right-clicking on the taskbar, choosing toolbars, and enabling the "Audio Player" bar. Then if you wish you can enable the "Volume" button by simply going to the Options menu and choosing "Show Volume Button."

I also created the install for this one. However, in this case if you have tried the actual install file and Shell Audio Player doesn't load, all you have to do is simply browse to the C:WINDOWSSYSTEM32 directory, find the file "shplayer.inf," right click it and choose install.

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iefind.exe - Internet Explorer Find Bar
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This powertoy adds a toolbar to Internet Explorer that is equivalent to the Edit menu's "Find on this page..." (CTRL-F) option.

Though this powertoy was given a lot of negative responses, I included it just in case there was somebody out there who wanted to get their hands on it. Since this version was only included within the first few beta releases of the Powertoys Set, and it was decided that it would not be included early on, I was able to actually use the setup files supplied by MS for this release.

Simply install the file, go to IE, right click on your toolbars and choose the "Find" toolbar. There it is!