WildBill

I think I finally have it I'm going to take a few days to test MS11-012, but I think I have all the visual issues with 32-bit icon support licked. As you can see, if your screen depth is 32bpp, Explorer and IE will automatically use larger 24x24 32-bit toolbar images if you have it set to use large icons. I tried to find ones that were appropriate, and I found these -- sort of Vista-meets-2k images. The old images are still there and will be used if you're running at lower than 32-bit screen depth. This also includes a similar Explorer system tray patch so 32-bit icons can appear on the system tray. Since it includes an Explorer.exe patch I'm tempted to update all those images as well, but I figure there's no rush, so I'm leaving all the other images alone. As for the new toolbar images, I'm going to tweak them just a little bit from what you see here (like tweaking the contrast on a few images), but this is essentially what they'll look like. Edit...updated the screenshot after fixing several images.

A small update... My MS11-012 patch wasn't ready last week after all, but now it's almost there (one visual issue left to fix). There are a lot of goodies in this one which is why it took so long (not to mention the fact that I'm having to work out the issues with no roadmap to follow). When i release it I'll post a complete list of the new features it brings. For anyone else making patches or otherwise tinkering with the Windows files, the patches.asm file might be a little interesting. I've had to write a ton of general helper routines that could be useful. I've started the MS11-011 patch, but it's a long way from completion. Considering how many patches are coming out on Tuesday I might put it on the back burner depending on what else is out there.

I finished porting MS11-012 to 2k today and I can report that MS has not fixed the problem from this patch. Installing MS11-012 will IMHO almost certainly bring back the BSOD's.

I finally finished the MS11-012 patch today, including all the other enhancements it includes. Some parts are thoroughly tested, but I want to test the completed patch for at least a day before posting it. Then I'll look into the IE patch, but the nature of the changes is such that I can't make any promises.

Hey all, just wanted to offer a little word of caution. I've mostly finished porting MS11-012 to Win2k and it appears that they have NOT yet fixed the uninitialized variables issue that was causing the BSOD's. Your mileage may vary, of course, since the nature of uninitialized stack variables is that the behavior is non-deterministic, but I would advise EXTREME caution with respect to that patch.

SmoothText 1.1.8 is now available; it includes a small fix for Firefox 4 compatibility. Enjoy,

That's strange about not being able to slipstream MS11-002, but I admit that I don't know anything about how slipstreaming works. As far as I know I'm not doing anything strange in building the patches. I've reached the point where I think I've completed 32-bit icon support for comctl32.dll, and I'm now working on MS11-012. The patch will include three files: win32k.sys, user32.dll, and comctl32.dll, since those will constitute a matched set. It will also include an enhancement I made back in January that adds GetLayeredWindowAttributes() support, which I needed to be able to run the HP Update program that came with my laptop. I can't guarantee that 32-bit icon support will be as good as in XP since I had to write all the code from scratch but it should be slightly more capable than Daedalus. For example, you'll now have the option to supply the larger 44h-sized IMAGELISTDRAWPARAMS struct to Imagelist_DrawIndirect to take advantage of grayscaling and variable alpha-blending, and the code also somewhat supports drawing inverted-color alpha-blended icons.

Just a little update... I've been trying to finish native 32-bit icon support and it's almost there. I still have at least one more routine to upgrade and one of my own to enhance a little more and then I need to see about improving the look of disabled icons similar to the way that Daedalus does. It won't support all 256 potential raster operations when using an alpha-blended image list, but the normal ones should work when I'm done. Even Daedalus didn't support every possible raster op, so it should be a wash. The plan is to bundle this with the latest win32k patch (which I haven't done yet, but I've done the first analysis pass on it). If I wanted to try to support every possible raster op (all 256 of them) I theoretically could, but it would take quite a while and I don't see the benefit unless we run into an app that uses an obscure one. I have Yuan's Windows Graphics Programming book (the really huge one) that gives a complete explanation on how raster op codes are parsed so I have all the information for it, but it would be anything but easy nonetheless (remember, I'd have to write it all in assembly).

That dialog is in winsrv.dll. which was changed in MS10-069 (KB2121546).

Thanks I don't mind having the patches be a little more visible for people -- I've been concerned that only people here knew about them. Another nagging concern is that at some point we could use a rollup patch, but I have no idea how to make one. I've partially analyzed the IE MS11-003 patch, and it looks like it will be a real chore to port. MS added a field to some classes and this caused ripple effects in all of their child classes such that there are a LOT of small changes in mshtml.dll (the only file that actually changed). I think a port is possible but I'm going to have to be very methodical in building it. Tonight I decided to take a break and started looking into enhancing comctl32.dll to finish 32-bit icon support. So far I'm adding some utility routines that I'll need and documenting changes that I'll eventually have to make to hook them in. I'm hoping that it won't be too hard to do. If I can finish the icon upgrade I'll probably bundle it with MS11-012 since the first part of the icon upgrade included patches to win32k.sys -- in fact, if I go that route, I'll also include the latest user32.dll in the patch even though it didn't change this month, because all three files (win32k.sys, user32.dll, comctl32.dll) will constitute a matched set at that point. The more I think about it, I'll probably see if I can knock out MS11-012 and possibly some of the easier patches before going back to MS11-003 (I've performed a partial analysis of all of them). I understand the nature of most of the MS11-003 changes as they're not particularly complex, but there are so many that I need to think a little more about how to efficiently port it.

You're welcome You'd probably have to install each patch one at a time to find out which one is changing the language. My guess is that it's one of the font patches, but the font patches only affect the PostScript driver. I don't see how that would change your system dialogs unless you're using PS fonts. Another possibility might be that your text is longer than the English text and is overwriting something else? In other news, I just spent the last week analyzing MS11-006 and mapping the 2k code in shelll32.dll and shimgvw.dll. After all this I've concluded that the patch doesn't apply to 2k -- the code in question doesn't exist in the 2k versions. While I wish I could get that week back, at least now I have those files almost completely mapped out so any further changes to them should be easy to track down. At least that attack vector apparently doesn't affect us...

I honestly wouldn't know. I have a box with 2k Advanced Server on it but I hardly ever use it anymore and I haven't bothered to boot it up to apply any of these patches to it. So far I've only been testing on my 2k Pro laptop. If you have an installation of Pro I suppose you could compare a fully MS-patched Pro with a fully MS-patched Server to see which files differ. If I ever get the time I really should boot my server box up and do some comparing: unfortunately the patches from this month are going to be a real PITA to port. I don't think there's any way I can get them all done before the next drop in March, but I think I can finish MS11-006 by the end of the week.

Hmm, okay, that fix didn't take too long MS11-010 V2 is posted, and this appears to work properly. I had to fix a couple of jumps and deal with some variable swapping that the XP patch was doing. If you still have V1 installed you can just install this on top of it. The version of csrsrv.dll will bump up to 5.0.2195.7368 so you can tell if V2 is installed.

I've had to remove yesterday's MS11-010 patch as it was causing problems with cmd.exe (the command shell wouldn't close when you tried to get rid of it). Anyone who has installed it should uninstall the patch from Add/Remove Programs. I'll be looking at it today to see if I can isolate the issue.

The patch for MS11-010 is now posted. I've also partially analyzed MS11-006, but before I proceed further with it I'm looking at the others to see if there are any that I can put together quickly. This was one of them. Anyhow, until the next time...

My MS11-007 patch is now available. The changes were generally pretty minor, though in one case MS replaced a routine outright (though the overall logic still didn't change all that much). Basically the patch performs some more font validation.

I took the night off from Windows patches and made some more improvements to SmoothText. This version fixes some bugs in the last version and adds further speed improvements for newer CPU's that support SSE4.1 instructions (many dual-core and quad-core CPU's support them). These optimizations only affect the W2k version, but I also improved the internal bitmap code to pre-align images along 16-byte boundaries. This was important to realize the full benefit on the W2k version but also has the potential to result in a modest speed improvement for the NT4 version. Version 1.1.7 is now available with the changes.

Version 1.1.6 of SmoothText is now available. The only change is speed optimizations for the skinning engine. Performance isn't yet where I'd like it to be, but it's noticeably faster. Both the NT4 and W2k versions will see a speed boost when the skinning engine is active, though the W2k version will see a greater improvement since it supports SSE2 whereas NT4 only supports MMX.

It all depends on the time I have available. There are a bunch of new patches that I have to do this month, and I haven't even started yet (I've been taking a couple of days to speed up SmoothText's skinning engine). Full 32-bit icon support would mainly involve updates to comctl32.dll, if I can get to it.

I've posted my port of the MS11-002 patch on the master list. This is a patch to MDAC 2.8 SP1, so make sure that you first have that installed before applying it. I'm not at all sure how to test it, so I created a small Access database and tried reading it from within MS Access as well as from a free MDB viewer. I also checked the ODBC control panel applet to make sure that it was working. Everything seems to work fine in a VM and on my laptop so I've decided to post it. My notes are bundled in the executable as usual.

Sorry, this is my fault. I should have explained this. The tool can only safely move certain sections, like resources or relocs. If you move anything else the file won't work because all the relative offsets will be broken. The only thing that moving a section is really useful for is moving the resources and relocs out of the way so you can grow a section that sits before them. When I need to make room for more code, what I do depends on whether the file has room for more section entries. If it does, I usually select the resources section and do "Insert section before..." to add another code section before it. If there isn't room for another section entry I usually look for two adjacent sections that I can safely combine. For instance, if the code and read-only data sections are next to each other then I combine them to free up a section entry, then I add a code section (usually inserting it before the resources section). I just posted version 0.0.4 which should fix some bugs and adds one extra feature. It also has some more .map files from the patches I've added.

I haven't updated this in a while, but if I can ever get my head above water with respect to the Win2k patches I'd like to do some more work on this. Anyway, I thought I'd post a desktop screenshot to show what it can do. I'm curious: has anyone tried building any SmoothText skins?

I had read the blog entry, but according to the Google translation it looks like there are problems with it (I can read a little Katakana when it's just spelling out English loanwords and I know maybe a dozen Kanji characters, but that isn't enough to read what's really important). With that in mind I decided to start from scratch. One of the reasons why I always include or post my notes is that I'm hoping it will help him make a JPN version (or anyone else).

My patch for MS10-099 is up It basically adds bunch of overflow checking and wasn't that hard to do. For any MS lurkers, however, please extract my notes (with /x) and look at my comments for PxAfTapiTranslateTapiCallParams because I don't think the patch gets the logic right. I think I corrected it in my 2k patch, but you might want to take a second look at the XP one.

BWC, do you have a list handy of what api's wmp10 needs that aren't in 2k? Curious anout what it's missing