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UxTheme Signature Bypass


bigmuscle

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8 minutes ago, NoelC said:

And make sure you know that using a non-Microsoft-signed theme can get you into trouble when you upgrade the OS...  You'll either have to be careful to remember to disable re-theming before running through an upgrade or be sure to be able to restore your system if you get a black screen of death.

-Noel

That's why I prefer UxTSB by BigMuscle insteed of file patching. Even if after Windows update AeroGlass became incompatible with new updated Windows build, DWMGlass.dll injects UxTSB.dll in this case, and visual style loads...

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1 hour ago, Octopuss said:

Ok.

How do the patchers work anyway? Are they all based on the same concept?

Edit: Uh, the theme I bought, what are these folders "Hide CommanBar" and "Show CommanBar"? And I presume the OldNewExplorer is not mandatory for the theme.

I think the 'Hide Comman[d]Bar' version just does away with the tool bar. If you don't want that to happen, use the files from the 'Shown Comman[d]Bar' folder.

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That is weird, because I can't see any command bar in my Windows 10 at all.

Communicating with the guy is major pain in the a**, because his engrish looks more like klingon, and I have no idea what is he saying :( I've been trying to find out whether that OldNewExplorer is a hard requirement for the theme, and his replies are always different.

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Jesus, I give up. The guy is an id***. I wasted half an hour of my life trying to explain not everyone wants to install five other programs just to install a stupid theme, and he just goes

"When OldNewExplorer not work on future, it will has update"

Wasted money.

Edited by Octopuss
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On 8/17/2018 at 5:22 AM, Octopuss said:

Jesus, I give up. The guy is an id***. I wasted half an hour of my life trying to explain not everyone wants to install five other programs just to install a stupid theme, and he just goes

"When OldNewExplorer not work on future, it will has update"

Wasted money.

I install the necessary minimum and also do not like to install OldNewExplorer because I like the New Explorer and not the old one. I do not want to be stuck in the past.

99% of the themes are free, I told you where to find them https://www.deviantart.com/devillnside, but you preferred to pay, now do not complain. 

You can learn from own mistakes or from the mistakes of others!

Edited by GTI.H
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I wish I could still use custom themes but because I forgot to remove AeroGlass and the theme bypass before updating to 1709 it's completely broken custom themes for me.  A reinstall of Windows would fix it but it takes far too long to reinstall everything.

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On 8/14/2018 at 12:57 AM, Aethelflaed said:
On 8/13/2018 at 8:20 PM, Octopuss said:

But I can create a theme and use it without problems - I mean otherwise there wouldn't be the "use custom theme" option etc., where I can apply what I previously customized.

How do you define third party theme anyway? And is this new to Windows 10? I tried googling around and found pretty much nothing.

Yes, Windows 10 supports themes of a sort, without having to patch dll files, or inject other dlls, into your system. Such themes are limited to colours, backgrounds, sounds and mouse cursors, however.

Yet the Windows 10 engine is capable of altering much more than just the things just mentioned - buttons, titlebars, scrollbars and the like can all, in principle, be changed. Microsoft doesn't really want you to do this, preferring for its users to work with a mostly uniform interface. This is not surprising, really. The look of its interface helps Microsoft set Windows 10 aside from, for instance, Windows XP, Vista, 7, or 8. This is important from a marketing viewpoint as these OSes are otherwise very similar. Strip away Windows 'app' support, a few security features, and a lot of telemetry, and Windows 10 is not so very different from 7.

It started with the theme settings that could be altered represented by checkboxes in the following screenshot:

dr4sgGo.png

Then Windows XP came and introduced concept of visual styles. They store images and other resources that allow skinning of windows' title bars, controls used by programs like buttons, checkboxes, scrollbars, etc. Selected visual style file (.msstyles extension) is actually just another theme setting. But as is well known, Microsoft doesn't allow users to create their own visual styles, hence digital signature check that prevents loading 3rd party visual styles.

Another important thing that Windows XP brought was the new version of Common Control Library (comctl32.dll), version 6.0 to be precise. Its descriptions says User Experience Controls Library. The library is responsible for providing controls like scrollbars, buttons, checkboxes, etc. to applications. Version 6.0 allows usage of skinned controls that are defined by visual style. Programs must be modified for them to load new version of the library, the default is still the old 5.80 version. When the old version is used, controls will have the classic appearance regardless of the used visual style.

On 8/15/2018 at 4:51 PM, Octopuss said:

So do all these themes actually require Aero Glass or not?

For themes that change window borders to have rounded corners. Aero Glass can fix their appearance if configured correctly since they're not rendered properly by default (glass geometry radius setting).

On 8/16/2018 at 2:38 PM, Octopuss said:

How do the patchers work anyway? Are they all based on the same concept?

They all strive to make the code that loads visual style always go in the same direction regardless of whether the visual style is signed by Microsoft or not, so it never bails out on unsigned visual style. Some makes changes in memory during runtime (like the one discussed here), others modify the affected files on disk. Former method isn't as messy and is easier to undo. The latter method must be manually re-applied any time Microsoft updates affected files. And you never know which update will change those files, so if/when it does happen, you find yourself unable to login if you didn't revert to default theme before updating.

On 8/18/2018 at 7:07 PM, GTI.H said:

I install the necessary minimum and also do not like to install OldNewExplorer because I like the New Explorer and not the old one. I do not want to be stuck in the past.

OldNewExplorer doesn't alter anything on its own unless you explicitly tell it to or the theme contains customized shellstyle.dll, which customizations are recognized and applied by OldNewExplorer.

Extensions like that exist because Microsoft introduced a number of usability regressions with time.

Edited by UCyborg
Corrected description of comctl32.dll
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4 hours ago, djmagnifique said:

I wish I could still use custom themes but because I forgot to remove AeroGlass and the theme bypass before updating to 1709 it's completely broken custom themes for me.  A reinstall of Windows would fix it but it takes far too long to reinstall everything.

You can use third party themes if you want, what you said does not stop you from doing so and you do not need to reinstall Windows.

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12 hours ago, GTI.H said:

You can use third party themes if you want, what you said does not stop you from doing so and you do not need to reinstall Windows.

Actually I can't.  I can download a theme and install it but when I try to select it it just loads windows 10 theme elements and nothing from the 3rd party theme.  However I can get things looking how I want using just AeroGlass and a theme atlas that I got from elsewhere on this site so all is good for me.

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4 hours ago, Octopuss said:

Except there is no theme for Windows 10 there that would resemble Windows 7.

https://www.deviantart.com/devillnside/gallery/64409206/Windows-10-Themes-for-RS2-RS4-Builds

There's Sagorpirbd's Windows 7 theme, but I think that no longer works.

In any case, those CleoDesktop themes apply just fine. I have several of them, in fact, among which a Win7 Aero theme which, I take it, is also what you downloaded.

The only problem I've encountered is with the scaling of title bar buttons in a CleoDesktop OSX Theme that I downloaded.

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2 hours ago, djmagnifique said:

Actually I can't.  I can download a theme and install it but when I try to select it it just loads windows 10 theme elements and nothing from the 3rd party theme.  However I can get things looking how I want using just AeroGlass and a theme atlas that I got from elsewhere on this site so all is good for me.

What you need is just a method for "UxTheme Signature Bypass".

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22 hours ago, Aethelflaed said:

In any case, those CleoDesktop themes apply just fine. I have several of them, in fact, among which a Win7 Aero theme which, I take it, is also what you downloaded.
 

I don't really like the OldNewExplorer requirement. It's not a hard one, but without it it looks weird. I would have very much preferred if he simply left Explorer untouched.

WSw3ccV.png

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