New Version of ExplorerPatcher

spapakons · Mar 15, 2023

I have no need to enable Windows 10 style at the taskbar. I use Open Shell to customize it, so thankfully this bug doesn't affect me.

cbiweb · Mar 15, 2023

knekkel said:
Win 11 version 22621.1413
Taskbar breaks when using "Windows 10" as the Taskbar Style

No problems here under those conditions. I'm using the Win10 taskbar style, but the Win11 Start Menu. I wonder if that makes a difference?

Silbian · Mar 15, 2023

cbiweb said:
No problems here under those conditions. I'm using the Win10 taskbar style, but the Win11 Start Menu. I wonder if that makes a difference?

Same settings, I got no problems at the moment.
All functions in status bar are working, sliders ( Volume - Brightness ) as well. Alt+Tab to switch between open tasks works fine.

Hary · Mar 15, 2023

cbiweb said:
No problems here under those conditions. I'm using the Win10 taskbar style, but the Win11 Start Menu. I wonder if that makes a difference?

Same here.

cbiweb · Mar 15, 2023

Silbian said:
All functions in status bar are working, sliders ( Volume - Brightness ) as well. Alt+Tab to switch between open tasks works fine.

Interesting. I still have no sliders. I have had the occasional breakage of Alt+Tab since the previous update, but restarting Explorer fixes that.

thrawn · Mar 15, 2023

Hello! My first post here, please be gentle. :wink:

I have just tried following the [classic theme tutorial] by the EP developer, as I'm interested in restoring something akin to the old GDI (Win2000) look on Windows 11. Sadly, I've run into pretty bad problems even when following the tutorial very thoroughly. I'm thinking at least some of the tools might have issues with the current Windows 11 22H2 build?

I have skipped the optional step 14 in the tutorial, as the TaskBowFree tool is being described as unstable.

Windows runs on VirtualBox on a RHEL8 Linux host with 3D acceleration disabled. Win11 setup is clean, no GUI mods at first
Windows version: Windows 11 Professional 22H2, fully updated today before starting with the mod
Windows build number: 22621.1413
Explorer Patcher version: 22621.1344.53.1

3rd party tools as described in the tutorial:

OpenShell 4.4.160 with modified StartMenuDLL.dll for 4.4.160
7+ Taskbar Tweaker v5.14.1
Modified desk.cpl (Themes registered via bundled "Color Schemes (w2k).reg")
Classic Task Manager (Win7-like version)
ClassicThemeTray 1.1.0.0
Compiled AutoHotKey script "classic.exe" from the tutorial, bundling AutoHotKey 1.1.33.10

False positives reported by Microsoft Windows Defender happened twice, once for ClassicThemeTray and once for another component after rebooting the machine, not sure which one. In both cases I allowed the programs to run and confirmed all tools can indeed be manually launched without triggering the anti-virus system.

All tools configured with reg files as shown in the classic theme tutorial. The one problematic registry entry (the "Userinit"=C:\Windows\System32\schtasks.exe /run /tn "Classic" one) has been manually confirmed. I had to "Enable advanced mitigations" in the "Advanced" menu of Explorer Patcher manually though, as it would not be set by the reg file for some reason.

I read the Explorer Patcher README file and parts of the Wiki to see whether I did something wrong, but I couldn't determine what I might have missed.

Old GDI/GDI+ programs appear to work just fine with this, but newer ones such as Notepad, Paint, Explorer's file browser etc. are pretty broken in terms of both rendering parts of their window decorations as well as functionality. This is mostly related to the title bar, which is being rendered horribly wrong, with minimize / maximize / close buttons being non-functional.

Sub-dialogs (such as e.g. a "Save As..." dialog) are rendered and decorated correcty though (not shown in the screenshots below), when spawned from such modern programs. Also, the title bar buttons are functional for those, e.g. the "x" one.

Screenshots following. The first from left to right is before having enabled "advanced mitigations" in EP, so issues can be expected, but the other two have everything enabled (unless I did something wrong without noticing).

Once advanced mitigations are switched on and Windows 11 context menus are disabled, the context menu works normally in Windows explorer, but not anywhere on the task bar, see third screenshot. It's just empty. Funnily enough, items are still somewhat clickable if you hit the right spots in those thin bars, but yeah.

As can be seen, classic GDI/GDI+ programs render correctly, e.g Classic Task Manager as seen in screenshot 2. What you can also see in #2 is how the Firefox titlebar renders somewhat fine, but the ones of Explorer's file manager and Notepad don't. It's the same for all modern GUI programs, even the cmd.exe is partially affected.

The start button mod also does not work, it's just "black" afterwards, so I set a different one in OpenShell settings just to get correct rendering. Even the black button was otherwise functional though.

I'm posting all of this here, as the original developer does not want us to submit GitHub issues upon hitting problems like this one and has also closed the Discussions section because it seems there was just too much noise there. There is no way to ask for support directly anymore it seems.

Can anyone here hint at what I might have done wrong to get that kind of symptoms? Or are the classic theme tutorial and / or some of the tools just not compatible with the current feature release 22H2 of Windows 11?

Thanks for your help! :)

Edit: I'm not a real developer, so if anything has to be changed on the source code level, I quite likely can't manage, especially the recompilation and linking parts.

Edit 2: The link to the tutorial was wrong. Fixed now.

Snuupy · Mar 15, 2023

Looks like ExplorerPatcher is out of date. On build 22621.1413 (after a forced Windows update), Win+Tab (Task View) doesn't work anymore and I'm forced to use the Win11 Taskbar.

Diag9 · Mar 15, 2023

I've been having a lot of Explorer crashes after that Windows update when using ExplorerPatcher.
When I can get it to stop crashing, I can't change volume, use Alt Tab, Task View, or really do anything on my Logitech keyboard besides type unless I change the Taskbar options back to the default Windows 11.

thrawn · Mar 15, 2023

So... Can I assume that it's just ExplorerPatcher being outdated?

pencock · Mar 15, 2023

Windows 11 with the newest explorer patcher build

It's broken. Can't alt tab, windows tab, a lot of shortcuts broken, file browser not working right, and my system volume OSD no longer pops up when adjusting volume from the keyboard.

The-Hive · Mar 15, 2023

I have just downloaded the update 22621.1413 stable build on all 3 of my machines, 2 are fine but one has gone back to a transparent taskbar with very small icons and the new style right click context menu. any ideas how to fix this?? TAI

hdmi · Mar 16, 2023

On 22621.1413 with EP 22621.1344.53.1, applying the registry tweak to bring back the Windows 10 taskbar

reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell\Update\Packages /f /v UndockingDisabled /t REG_DWORD /d 1

before switching to the Windows 11 taskbar in EP causes the Windows 10 taskbar to still be shown, which is a good thing, as doing this causes explorer to no longer crash after I right-click on the bluetooth systray icon. The only real downside of this is that the weather widget is gone. The properties item in the right-click menu of the taskbar is also gone, but I have put a normal desktop shortcut %windir%\system32\rundll32.exe %windir%\dxgi.dll,ZZGUI on my taskbar toolbar as an easy workaround. Other than that, the items in EP settings that relate specifically to the Windows 10 taskbar are gone, but I can switch it back to the Windows 10 taskbar without choosing to click on restart explorer as an easy workaround. Another thing I noticed after I had updated to 22621.1413, the WinX menu that had previously been broken is working again. So yeah, EP is still broken, but it's broken in a cute kind of way. I decided I like the weather a bit better than I like bluetooth so, I'm keeping my fsquirt.exe shortcut on my taskbar toolbar for now. lol

The-Hive · Mar 16, 2023

Hopefull @valinet will notice this problem with build 22621.1413 with EP 22621.1344.53.1 as he did such a great job the last time with the explorer loop. the omly difference with this machine is the EP version is a recent download, but worked fine until the windows update to 22621.1413 The other two work fine and have had EP for years and have just been updated through the app

The-Hive · Mar 16, 2023

UPDATE

All sorted and back to normal. I found that changing the taskbar color in the Classic Shell settings seems to have done the trick, everything now working great on all 3 machines

OAT · Mar 16, 2023

'Hopefull @valinet will notice this problem with build 22621.1413 with EP 22621.1344.53.1 as he did such a great job the last time with the explorer loop.'

Violins playing in the background...

The-Hive · Mar 16, 2023

OAT said:
'Hopefull @valinet will notice this problem with build 22621.1413 with EP 22621.1344.53.1 as he did such a great job the last time with the explorer loop.'

Violins playing in the background...

As I said, all fixed, it was the taskbar settings in ClassicShell

ThrashZone · Mar 16, 2023

The-Hive said:
As I said, all fixed, it was the taskbar settings in ClassicShell

Hi,
What do you use on EP if you use openshell ?

cbiweb · Mar 16, 2023

Snuupy said:
Looks like ExplorerPatcher is out of date. On build 22621.1413 (after a forced Windows update), Win+Tab (Task View) doesn't work anymore and I'm forced to use the Win11 Taskbar.

Diag9 said:
I've been having a lot of Explorer crashes after that Windows update when using ExplorerPatcher.
When I can get it to stop crashing, I can't change volume, use Alt Tab, Task View, or really do anything on my Logitech keyboard besides type unless I change the Taskbar options back to the default Windows 11.

pencock said:
Windows 11 with the newest explorer patcher build

It's broken. Can't alt tab, windows tab, a lot of shortcuts broken, file browser not working right...

Very strange, I haven't experienced any of those issues with 22621.1413. Something else is getting in the way on some machines.
That being said, it may seriously be time to ditch EP. It seems like the end is very near. (I've threatened that before but I think the end of the world has come).

Diag9 · Mar 16, 2023

The crashing may be a compatibility issue between Start11 and EP, disabled a few settings in EP and Explorer.exe seems fine.
This issue only began with the latest Windows update. All software had not required any other changes to work prior.

The media keys, Alt Tab, and Task View are an incompatibility between Logitech Options and EP, something that only started with the new Windows update.
Only way for those commands to work is by using the default Windows 11 style for the Taskbar.

Not even Task View works when it's a button on the Task Bar when in the Windows 10 style.
This is regardless if Logitech Options is running or not.