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