Silent Aero Glass Reloaded [Works with RC4]

[francesco149]

Silent Aero Glass Reloaded

Binaries:

BitBucket

Source code:

BitBucket

Google Code

Silent Aero Glass is a little utility I wrote that prevents the annoying demo version message of Big Muscle's Aero Glass for Windows 8 from popping up.

If you don't trust the pre-compiled binaries I provided in the download section get Visual Studio 2010/2012, clone the source and compile it yourself.

This software does not modify bigmuscle's software in any way, as it merely hides the messagebox window so it does not violate any kind of copyright.

Please note that this software was only tested on my own machine on Windows 8 x64. Use it at your own risk!

Installation

Installing silent-ag is as simple as running the setup program. It will be automatically added to your startup programs and started after the installation. If you need to close or disable it, just right click the tray icon in your task bar.

License

This software is free and open-source and licensed under the GPLv3 license: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt

Old version that used x64 system-wide hooks and broke after RC4 (in case you're looking for manual x64 winapi hooks examples):

Silent Aero Glass

Binaries:

BitBucket

Source code:

BitBucket

Google Code

Silent Aero Glass is a little utility I wrote that prevents the annoying demo version message of Big Muscle's Aero Glass for Windows 8 from popping up. At the moment it only works on the RC3 64-bit version of DWMGlass and it's broken for any later version of Aero Glass. Feel free to modify it for 32-bit if you need it.

If you don't trust the pre-compiled binaries I provided in the download section get Visual Studio 2010/2012, clone the source and compile it yourself. Make sure you use Visual Studio 2010's compiler (even if you're on VS2012).

Also, this dll can be modified to suppress any kind of messagebox system-wide on x64 systems.

Please note that this does not interfere with any program that uses MessageBoxTimeoutW, but it might cause problems with software that hooks MessageBoxTimeoutW as well.

This software does not modify bigmuscle's software in any way, as it merely hooks MessageBoxTimeoutW system-wide, so it does not violate any kind of copyright.

Please note that this software was only tested on my own machine on Windows 8 x64. Use it at your own risk!

Installation

Installing silent-ag works pretty much in the same way as installing Big Muscle's Aero Glass.

• Download the binaries in the download section or compile the dll yourself
• Place the dll in an easily reachable directory, such as C:\silent-ag
• Create a .reg file (or edit the one provided with the precompiled binaries) and paste the following in it (make sure you replace the first dll with the path to your DWMGlass.dll and the second one with the path to your silent-ag dll):

  Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows]"LoadAppInit_DLLs"=dword:00000001"AppInit_DLLs"="C:\\silent-ag\\silent-ag.dll C:\\DWM\\DWMGlass.dll""RequireSignedAppInit_DLLs"=dword:00000000

• Save the .reg file and double-click it. Confirm when prompted.
• Reboot. The annoying messagebox should be gone!

Tech Details

If you're wondering what I'm using to hook WinAPIs on x64, I'm simply allocating a relay function 15 bytes before MessageBoxTimeoutW that contains a 64-bit jump to the hook function. Then I simply write a standard 32-bit 0xE9 jmp to the relay function on MessageBoxTimeoutW. This is all done by writing bytecode manually obviously (Visual Studio does not support inline asm for x64 yet).

For more info, browse through the code - it's well-commented.

License

This software is free and open-source and licensed under the GPLv3 license: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt

Edited July 20, 2013 by francesco149

[Blackbird256]

Thanks dude. Copy-Pasting this just incase. This doesn't interfere with other apps calling the MessageBoxW does it?

Edited June 29, 2013 by Blackbird256

[adacom]

thanks - but seems to crash other programs

Edited June 29, 2013 by adacom

[DosProbie]

Don't work, every time you reload or enable and disable aero the "AppInit_DLLs" string value goes back to default DWM.dll..So you lose all the settings to your path and your back where you started..

[Blackbird256]

Works for me. Finally I can move from using 0.7+.

[francesco149]

Thanks dude. Copy-Pasting this just incase. This doesn't interfere with other apps calling the MessageBoxW does it?

Check the source, any call to messageboxW that does not contain "Big Muscle" in the text is ignored so it shouldn't interfere at all.

thanks - but seems to crash other programs

Are you sure you're on x64? Which programs is it crashing? What cpu have you got?

Don't work, every time you reload or enable and disable aero the "AppInit_DLLs" string value goes back to default DWM.dll..So you lose all the settings to your path and your back where you started..

Which version of aero glass are you using? I'm using 0.94 RC3 and it works just fine. If anything else fails, try the old RC3 which didn't have the auto installer, that one will work for sure.

[adacom]

yes i am on 64 - stupid i may be but not that stupid

it crashes Total commander - a program i use all the time - parts of it work but use key presses to do things and it crashes it - delete a file [for example] is shift and delete - try and delete a file and the program crashes

i went no further thats a show stopper for me

Edited July 1, 2013 by adacom

[francesco149]

yes i am on 64 - stupid i may be but not that stupid

it crashes Total commander - a program i use all the time - parts of it work but use key presses to do things and it crashes it - delete a file [for example] is shift and delete - try and delete a file and the program crashes

i went no further thats a show stopper for me

Tough luck :/ I have no idea of why this doesn't work for you, but I think it's related to your CPU's architecture. I'm writing raw bytecode instructions so they're probabilly not compatible with your particular CPU

Edited July 1, 2013 by francesco149

[adacom]

thanks - great when you are right or think you are - CPU - Intel Core i5 - M560 - pretty standard - but then maybe Intel have done something that makes them non compatable with your program

so as you say Tough Luck - but i guess others with equally odd Intel CPUs will also be having problems as it cannot be your code

[francesco149]

thanks - great when you are right or think you are - CPU - Intel Core i5 - M560 - pretty standard - but then maybe Intel have done something that makes them non compatable with your program

so as you say Tough Luck - but i guess others with equally odd Intel CPUs will also be having problems as it cannot be your code

I merely made this tool for myself and shared it as a proof of concept because I'm sure it will be useful to some people. It could be anything when we're talking about raw bytecode, as every cpu has slightly different dialects (one solution could be assembling the hook on the fly with an extremely reliable assembler library) so yeah eventually someone who knows what's wrong will fork my source code and fix it. It could also be crashing because that particular program hooks MessageBoxW as well.

[DosProbie]

Old RC3? I have 0.94 RC3

Which version of aero glass are you using? I'm using 0.94 RC3 and it works just fine. If anything else fails, try the old RC3 which didn't have the auto installer, that one will work for sure.

[francesco149]

Old RC3? I have 0.94 RC3

Which version of aero glass are you using? I'm using 0.94 RC3 and it works just fine. If anything else fails, try the old RC3 which didn't have the auto installer, that one will work for sure.

The "new" RC3 is the one with the automatic installer. The "old" one is the one where you have to manually open the .reg file

[DosProbie]

By "Auto Installer" BigMuscle did not do an installer, are you referring to the one by MrGriM?

Old RC3? I have 0.94 RC3

Which version of aero glass are you using? I'm using 0.94 RC3 and it works just fine. If anything else fails, try the old RC3 which didn't have the auto installer, that one will work for sure.

The "new" RC3 is the one with the automatic installer. The "old" one is the one where you have to manually open the .reg file

[francesco149]

By "Auto Installer" BigMuscle did not do an installer, are you referring to the one by MrGriM?

Old RC3? I have 0.94 RC3

Which version of aero glass are you using? I'm using 0.94 RC3 and it works just fine. If anything else fails, try the old RC3 which didn't have the auto installer, that one will work for sure.

The "new" RC3 is the one with the automatic installer. The "old" one is the one where you have to manually open the .reg file

Oh yeah sorry didn't notice it was by a diff person

[blackbb]

Does not work on RC4.

Please fix.