Explorer Patcher

Explorer Patcher is a patcher that enables various stuff in Explorer. For the moment, it includes the following:

• allows using the old taskbar in Windows 11 without the side effects of UndockingDisabled and with fully working search, modern apps showing properly, screen snip still working etc
• enables the power user menu (Win+X) when using the classic taskbar in Windows 11
• shows the Start menu on the monitor containing the cursor when invoked with the Windows key

This has been tested on the following builds:

• 22000.1 - works as advertised, tested with Start_ShowClassicMode which shows the Windows 10 Start menu; taskbar works, Win+X works and is skinned, WiFi flyout works, battery flyout works, no delay at logon
• 22000.168 - works as advertised, Start button opens Windows 11 Start menu (a half broken Windows 10 menu can be restored by copying StartMenuExperienceHost.exe and its DLLs from 22000.1); taskbar works, Win+X works and is skinned, WiFi flyout DOES NOT work (use control center aka gear icon or enable Windows 8 network flyout instead, battery flyout DOES NOT work (use Battery Mode utility), control center icon works, no delay at logon (!!!)

It should work on newer builds as well as long as the internal structure does not change too much (hopefully they don't remove all the legacy code), I am rolling with them at the moment and try to keep it working on the most recent CU (as of this time, 22000.168).

A changelog is available here.

A detailed description of how this works is available on my web site here.

The application comes in the form of a dynamic-link library (DLL). Precompiled binaries are available in Releases.

Installation

Simply copy the downloaded DLL named dxgi.dll to %windir% (usually C:\Windows) and restart Explorer.

At first launch, the application will notify you about missing symbols and will automatically download them from Microsoft. Then, it will try to determine some patch offsets for Explorer. The process involves automatically restarting Explorer a couple of times and evaluating the results. Please be patient and let this do its job; you will know it is done when you will see the old taskbar instead of the new one. Also, the application will show a notification to let you know it is done.

Downloaded symbols and application configuration is saved in the %appdata%\ExplorerPatcher folder.

To uninstall, simply delete dxgi.dll from %windir%.

How does this work?

The mechanism the application gets loaded is by exploiting the DLL search order in Windows. I take advantage of the fact that Explorer is one of the few system processes located in %windir% and not in %windir%\System32, so it does not affect most apps. Also, %windir% is not in the search path. Read more about this technique here. The main advantage here is that you do not have to keep an extra process running in the memory; plus, due to the diverse nature of how Explorer is launched, hooking it can be difficult.

I picked dxgi.dll because it is not on the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\KnownDLLs list, because it has few exports and is loaded very early by Explorer, when calling the DXGIDeclareAdapterRemovalSupport() function.

Configuration

The settings.ini file contains, among the offsets for the various hooked/exploited functions, a few parameters that you can tweak:

• General\AllowImmersiveContextMenus = 1 will show the new context menus in Explorer instead of the legacy one
• General\AllocConsole = 1 will show a console when the application runs (useful for diagnostics).

To change whether Start opens on the monitor the mouse is on, configure this registry setting (DWORD): HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StartPage\MonitorOverride: 0 = enable, 1 or not created = default, disable.

License

Hooking is done using the excellent funchook library (GPLv2 with linking exception), which in turn is powered by the diStorm3 (3-clause BSD) disassembler. Thus, I am offering this under GNU General Public License Version 2.0, which I believe is compatible.

Compiling

The following prerequisites are necessary in order to compile this project:

• Microsoft C/C++ Optimizing Compiler - this can be obtained by installing either of these packages:

  • Visual Studio - this is a fully featured IDE; you'll need to check "C/C++ application development role" when installing. If you do not require the full suite, use the package bellow.
  • Build Tools for Visual Studio - this just installs the compiler, which you'll be able to use from the command line, or from other applications like CMake

  Download either of those here. The guide assumes you have installed either Visual Studio 2019, either Build Tools for Visual Studio 2019.

• A recent version of the Windows SDK - for development, version 10.0.19041.0 was used, available here (this may also be offered as an option when installing Visual Studio)

• CMake - for easier usage, make sure to have it added to PATH during installation

• Git - you can use Git for Windows, or git command via the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

Steps:

1. Clone git repo along with all submodules

   git clone --recursive https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher
   

   If "git" is not found as a command, type its full path, or have its folder added to PATH, or open Git command window in the respective folder if using Git for Windows.

2. Compile funchook

   cd libs
   cd funchook
   md build
   cd build
   cmake -G "Visual Studio 16 2019" -A x64 ..
   

   If "cmake" is not found as a command, type its full path, or have its folder added to PATH.

   Type "Win32" instead of "x64" above, if compiling for x86. The command above works for x64.

   Now, in the libs\funchook\build folder, open the file funchook-static.vcxproj with any text editor, search and replace all occurences of <RuntimeLibrary>MultiThreadedDLL</RuntimeLibrary> with <RuntimeLibrary>MultiThreaded</RuntimeLibrary>.

   Once done, you can now compile funchook:

   cmake --build . --config Release
   

3. Compile ExplorerPatcher

   • Double click the ExplorerPatcher.sln to open the solution in Visual Studio. Choose Release and your processor architecture in the toolbar. Press F6 to compile.

   • Open an "x86 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2019" (for x86), or "x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2019" (for x64) (search that in Start), go to folder containing solution file and type:

     • For x86:

       msbuild ExplorerPatcher.sln /property:Configuration=Release /property:Platform=x86
       

     • For x64:

       msbuild ExplorerPatcher.sln /property:Configuration=Release /property:Platform=x64
       

   The resulting exe and dll will be in "Release" folder (if you chose x86), or "x64\Release" (if you chose x64) in the folder containing the solution file.

That's it. later, if you want to recompile, make sure to update the repository and the submodules first:

git pull
git submodule update --init --recursive