[WIP] Windows Vista Extended Kernel

[yoltboy01]

On 3/8/2022 at 9:38 AM, Sergiaws said:

still can't install Office 2019 despite that I copied the content of the cd to the desktop and added the setups to the osver.ini. There should be a method to install Office without the setup or modify the global osver.ini adding some stuffs like the number of the build, or bipass setup's restriction using a command line tool maybe? Don't know. Tried to create a portable with Cameyo, but no luck.

Not even Office 2013 works, so I guess you should try porting 2013 first instead of 2019

[Sergiaws]

10 hours ago, yoltboy01 said:

Not even Office 2013 works, so I guess you should try porting 2013 first instead of 2019

Office 2013/2016 will be more difficult to install, as far as @Win32 told, Office 2013/2016 has more checks against Windows Vista.

Edited March 17, 2022 by Sergiaws

[TSNH]

3 hours ago, Sergiaws said:

Office 2013/2016 will be more difficult to install, as far as @Win32 told, Office 2013/2016 has more checks against Windows Vista.

Another thing to consider is that office 2013+ uses sppsvc - a Windows Product Activation service introduced in Windows 7 which would have to be backported without breaking Vista's activation system. (Office 2010 had it's own licensing system), and I'm not sure if this will be possible in the near future.

Edited March 17, 2022 by TSNH

[Jakob99]

18 hours ago, SigmaTel71 said:

Don't you think that installing DirectX June 2010 redistributable package will be easier?

Right! I could have sworn my Vista build already had it (it has all the updates), but apparently it does not. I'll look into that.

[Jakob99]

On 3/16/2022 at 1:53 PM, Jakob99 said:

Just letting you guys know that the Microsoft Tinker game does not work with OSver.ini global configured like this:

[global]
Enabled=1
Win7SuperVerFix=1
MajorVersion=6
MinorVersion=1
BuildNumber=7600
CSDVersion=Service Pack 1
PlatformID=2

Ok, so Tinker does in fact work with an osver.ini set like above. To get it to run without having to restore the Vista version or moving the file to the desktop, just add this line in:

[C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Tinker\Tinker.exe]
Enabled=1

Save the file and then Tinker will open like normal with no complaints that it only works on Windows Vista Ultimate. Hopefully this helps people who want to run this game, but can't unless they either restore the Vista string or move the file to the desktop.

[Eddie Phizika]

Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool (kvrt.exe) fails to run with win7superfix, minorversion, majorversion and buildnumber set in osver.ini. it asks for KB4474419, which is installed. is there anything to be tried?

[Vistafand]

On 2/18/2022 at 6:39 PM, winvispixp said:

the new version fixed the explorer.exe problem on the first run

What was the problem?

[winvispixp]

6 hours ago, Vistafand said:

What was the problem?

"The ordinal 899 could not be located in the dynamic link library SHELL32.dll"

[WinVistaFan2008]

Good evening, I was wondering how I could bypass this error. The application I tried to install was Camtasia 18.0 and I have the Windows Vista Extended kernel installed (v6).

Regards.

[ffqq]

On 6/21/2020 at 5:41 AM, win32 said:

I have now fixed the import calls and added K32EmptyWorkingSet. So about 26 more functions to go in kernel32!

OBS Studio 19.2.0 is mostly working now, but there are a few missing functions in MFPlat.dll (Media Foundation Platform), like MFTEnumEx (used to find video/audio decoders) and MFCreateMFByteStreamOnStream. While it picks up on audio, it doesn't record or show video and creates tiny (corrupt) files. Or it may be because it forces a D3D11 renderer and my DX10 native GPU doesn't seem to work very well with DX11 (Cities: Skylines is unplayably glitchy in D3D11 mode on Vista and 7 but fine in D3D9 mode on XP x64).

I think that the media foundation extensions will be fun, as I may even introduce the functions from Windows 8 as opposed to just the ones new to 7. That would mean adding stuff like Direct3D 11-based video APIs. Though adding DX11.1+ features will be pointless if the drivers available for Vista can't use them. And getting WDDM 1.1+ drivers on Vista is going to be one difficult undertaking, but probably easier than porting WDDM 1.0 drivers to XDDM (Windows 2000 Display Driver Model).

And I've found another limitation of LOCAL files. Programs don't like being debugged when redirection is taking place to files within folders; they throw a fault in StackHash_**** when trying to launch them through Dependency Walker. But if the same file is loaded from system32 as opposed to the program directory, with no redirection taking place, the program works (as well as possible) through Dependency Walker. So I thought about .manifest files, which give you the option to redirect only the files specified within them.

Here is an example of the contents of a manifest file used for DLL redirection:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0">
    <assemblyIdentity version="1.0.0.0" name="redirector" type="win32" />
    <file name="kernel32.dll"> </file>
</assembly> 

But it appears that manifest files don't seem to help much in that regard. So I guess you will have to replace your system files with mine if you're planning on debugging programs using my files.

Once I get a wide array of programs working stable, I hope that you do one of your excellent videos about the kernel's capabilities. You create some great promotional tools for Vista, and this one will explore some uncharted territory for the OS.

On one last note, this isn't the only new kernel extension project that helps Vista users out:

The tutorial specifically mentions building for x86, but I built it in the Vista x64 build environment in the Windows 7 DDK, so it could help with certain classes of drivers. Will it help for modern GPU drivers? Not really. NVMe and USB 3? Sure.

 

MFTEnumEx is also required for the Roblox client (RobloxPlayerBeta.exe). The artificial software lock on the launcher (RobloxPlayerLauncher.exe) can easily be bypassed by your OS spoofer, but the client launches just fine (though it gets the MFTEnumEx error) with or without the OS spoofer as far as I've seen. Great work, by the way!

Edited April 2, 2022 by ffqq

[ffqq]

On 3/21/2022 at 11:52 PM, WinVistaFan2008 said:

Good evening, I was wondering how I could bypass this error. The application I tried to install was Camtasia 18.0 and I have the Windows Vista Extended kernel installed (v6).

Regards.

Use the OS version spoofer: 

 

[iUser04]

On 3/26/2022 at 8:50 AM, ffqq said:

MFTEnumEx is also required for the Roblox client (RobloxPlayerBeta.exe). The artificial software lock on the launcher (RobloxPlayerLauncher.exe) can easily be bypassed by your OS spoofer, but the client launches just fine (though it gets the MFTEnumEx error) without the OS spoofer as far as I've seen. Great work, by the way!

Hey, I did manage to get roblox studio (in like mid 2021) to start and run via stubbing a missing function with cff explorer (though i couldn't get client to start past a white screen) but chances are it is possible. though i haven't tried with later versions since then

[Brickedandroid]

@win32 please add Intel AVX support for Windows Vista Extended Kernel

Edited April 16, 2022 by Brickedandroid

[D.Draker]

Hi all ! One of the things that kept me alive on the Ukr. front is I had this dream to play MK11 on my Vista and GTX Titan X , so I literally ran straight to the PC and finally installed the latest (?) Kernel from November 2021 only to discover that several functions are still missing , very sad. 

GetThreadErrorMode

SetThreadErrorMode

K32GetModuleInformation

GetLogicalProcessorInformationEx

GetMaximumProcessorCount 

It also wanted numerous API-MS-WIN-xxxxxxx but I put them into the folder .

@win32, how are you , thanks.

[win32]

Some of these are implemented, on both 32 and 64 bit. But GetThreadErrorMode and GetMaximumProcessorCount are indeed lacking from at least one of the platforms.

GetLogicalProcessorInformationEx is somewhat buggy as well, but it has been fixed for a yet to be released update. This update will also simplify the version spoofing to remove the "VerFix/FirefoxFix" switches. You can simply use the regular MajorVersion/MinorVersion/BuildNumber values for the applications that would have used them.