New Version of ExplorerPatcher

The-Hive said:

You do not have the latest version. Right click on the taskbar>properties>updates and update to 22000.469.41.16 (released today)
Then right click on the taskbar> properties and work your way down the list of settings to set it up how you want it.
If any taskbar icons go missing after the update and you have an arrow pointing up they may be in there, if so drag them out.

Forgot to say they are stable versions if it continues check the openshell settings, I have both and they work with no problems

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I will update to the latest version later, any problems I'll let you know later, I'm not at my laptop right now.

But one thing I don't understand why would the explorer patcher switch off all the icons in the bottom right corner of the taskbar after the installation of explorer patcher, yes I know how to switch the icons back on in Windows 11 taskbar settings.

Before I had explorer patcher installed, I've also noticed when booting up the laptop or restarting the laptop sometimes Windows 11 randomly switches off the taskbar icons, about one to three taskbar icons on every reboot or restart, everytime this happens you have to switch them back on again in Windows 11 taskbar settings, this never happened in Windows 10, but it could be a bug in Windows 11 maybe??.

Have you had any problems with your Windows 11 setings with explorer patcher when installing Windows 11 updates then restarting your PC?. Do the Windows 11 settings stay intact?, in other words explorer patcher makes no changes to Windows 11 settings after Windows 11 updates.

I have had this for a long time but as far as I can remember that is quite normal first time of use.
right click taskbar>properties>Taskbar (top left)>customise notification Icons and select what you want.
I think the reason it does it is because it has to "break" the win 11 taskbar to work using old settings.
You may also want to install battery mode a small app which is very customisable and nicer looking. here is mine. I have also added a taskbar recycle bin and clock app. ( the only trouble with the clock app is it makes the command button lower and action centre button higher ) It is free and called Atomic alarm clock

Forgot to say..Use ExplorerPatcher to replace the icons not Windows Setting

MswFan43 said:

Hi

I have installed explorer patcher yesterday, the latest version on my Windows 11 Professional Laptop with Openshell installed. When explorer patcher is installed and then Windows explorer restarts, why does all my notifications icons on the bottom right hand corner of the taskbar get switched off?, is that normal for the first installation of explorer patcher and does any other settings get changed in the Control Panel or Windows Settings Menu or do all the other settings in the Control Panel/Windows settings menu stay intact?. In the future when there is a new version of explorer patcher available then the user will update within the properties menu of explorer patcher to the latest version will the same thing happen again to the task bar icon notification?. How do you make sure that explorer patcher does not change any settings in a future update? And lastly when installing Windows 11 updates then rebooting does that keep the settings the same with the explorer patcher installed?.

What is the best way around all these issues? And has anyone else experienced the same thing with explorer patcher installed.

Click to expand...

Can you turn them on? In Taskbar settings, and some in ExplorerPatcher settings

Once set, it will survive Windows upgrade, and also ExplorerPatcher update

The-Hive said:

I have had this for a long time but as far as I can remember that is quite normal first time of use.
right click taskbar>properties>Taskbar (top left)>customise notification Icons and select what you want.
I think the reason it does it is because it has to "break" the win 11 taskbar to work using old settings.
You may also want to install battery mode a small app which is very customisable and nicer looking. here is mine. I have also added a taskbar recycle bin and clock app. ( the only trouble with the clock app is it makes the command button lower and action centre button higher ) It is free and called Atomic alarm clock
View attachment 20089
Forgot to say..Use ExplorerPatcher to replace the icons not Windows Setting

Click to expand...

yes everything went fine with the latest update, no hiccups, all fine

AndreTen said:

Can you turn them on? In Taskbar settings, and some in ExplorerPatcher settings

Once set, it will survive Windows upgrade, and also ExplorerPatcher update

View attachment 20104

Click to expand...

yes i have turn them all on, all is working fine and any more problems, i will post here, thanks for your help

Windows is disabling them, so that they do not show on the new taskbar. It’s Windows that does it, every time you switched back to the Windows 11 taskbar, it used to reset the icons, and you had to reenable them.

It’s not EP, ExplorerPatcher tries not to destroy things, I don’t hide them on purpose and not even accidentally, Windows itself does. Also, I mitigated this problem in a commit some time ago, by now it’s there in both the latest pre-release and the latest release. With this, when you update EP or Windows or switch to the 11 taskbar and back, the icon state will persist just fine.

I am glad that the latest version works well. Thanks.

valinet said:

Windows is disabling them, so that they do not show on the new taskbar. It’s Windows that does it, every time you switched back to the Windows 11 taskbar, it used to reset the icons, and you had to reenable them.

It’s not EP, ExplorerPatcher tries not to destroy things, I don’t hide them on purpose and not even accidentally, Windows itself does. Also, I mitigated this problem in a commit some time ago, by now it’s there in both the latest pre-release and the latest release. With this, when you update EP or Windows or switch to the 11 taskbar and back, the icon state will persist just fine.

I am glad that the latest version works well. Thanks.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the clarification, yes I suspected it was Windows 11 not EP, yes folk at Microsoft are always sleeping on the job, they never get anything right. Anyway the latest version of EP works fine. Not planning to go back to Windows 11 taskbar, I'm sticking with Windows 10 taskbar in Windows 11, unless Microsoft make changes in the future to Windows 11 taskbar, I doubt they will.

I still try to understand my problem with weather widget. When I switch to Windows 11 taskbar and enable widgets (the button on taskbar) it immediately begins to work, shows the semi-transparent widgets area with some widgets and weather too (I removed less important widgets). But if I return to Windows 10 taskbar in EP and try to activate Weather, then instead of weather info and button I see the People button, which opens the People panel (it's inactive, I don't use it).

Something prevents EP from displaying weather widget. Also there is no any "ep_weather_host" in %APPDATA%\ExplorerPatcher and the update link apparently does nothing.

Slavic said:

I still try to understand my problem with weather widget. When I switch to Windows 11 taskbar and enable widgets (the button on taskbar) it immediately begins to work, shows the semi-transparent widgets area with some widgets and weather too (I removed less important widgets). But if I return to Windows 10 taskbar in EP and try to activate Weather, then instead of weather info and button I see the People button, which opens the People panel (it's inactive, I don't use it).

Something prevents EP from displaying weather widget. Also there is no any "ep_weather_host" in %APPDATA%\ExplorerPatcher and the update link apparently does nothing.

Click to expand...

Happened to me too. Restart solved it. i may have done some clicking on buttons in settings, not sure.. but it's working now.
Have the latest 41.2 version

Widgets button from Windows 11 taskbar and the weather widget in the Windows 10 taskbar have nothing in common except "widget" in their name. The former is a Microsoft thing while the latter is implemented by me from scratch.

As mentioned in the wiki: Weather · valinet/ExplorerPatcher Wiki, the weather widget is implemented in a separate DLL that gets loaded and runs in an external process using COM. I cannot guess why it is not working for you, there could be multiple reasons. When it doesn't work, the People button displays, as that's what the weather widget replaces. Seeing it directly suggests that the program fails to initialize the component. That could be due to many reasons like:

* Not having WebView2 Runtime on your install (you said Windows 11 widgets work, those use WebView2 as well, so likely not that)
* Registration of the DLL failed. Check these paths in the registry: `HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{A6EA9C2D-4982-4827-9204-0AC532959F6D}` and `HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\Interface\{CDBF3734-F847-4F1B-B953-A605434DC1E7}`.
* Check that you have the files `ep_weather_host.dll`, `ep_weather_host_stub.dll` and `WebView2Loader.dll` in `C:\Program Files\ExplorerPatcher`.

Other than that, idk, best is to test the program under a debugger, with that you'd determine rather easily what the issue is. As usual, there are many cases, maybe I missed something.

Reporting the results:
1) Widgets.exe and spawned processes msedgewebview2.exe present in the memory.
2) DLLs in ...\ExplorerPatcher: ep_weather_host.dll, ep_weather_host_stub.dll, WebView2Loader.dll, all of 30/01/2022 (dd/mm/yyyy)
3) Registry:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{A6EA9C2D-4982-4827-9204-0AC532959F6D}\InProcServer32]
@="C:\\Program Files\\ExplorerPatcher\\ep_weather_host.dll"
"ThreadingModel"="Apartment"
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\Interface\{CDBF3734-F847-4F1B-B953-A605434DC1E7} - does not exist

Why you do not report the issues to the Github? I do not think the author reads this thread.

@Anixx Valinet is the author see post #311

Reporting back: Yesterday Windows 11 updates were installed and rebooted laptop with latest stable version EP installed, all settings were intact, no problems, no issues and even all the notification icons on the taskbar, all loaded up fine.

Good to hear, go on his page on GitHub and check it all out.

The-Hive said:

Good to hear, go on his page on GitHub and check it all out.

GitHub - valinet/ExplorerPatcher: This project aims to enhance the working environment on Windows

This project aims to enhance the working environment on Windows - valinet/ExplorerPatcher

github.com

Click to expand...

Yes I have been following that page since November last year, EP is good handy customization utility that brings back functionality of Windows 11 to Windows 10 standards. Microsoft ain't good, Microsoft can't get anything right everytime a new version of Windows is released. It's always left to the third party talented creators like valinet to add the rest of the functionality to the operating system which Microsoft supposed do but then they couldn't do it.

Slavic said:

Reporting the results:
...
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\Interface\{CDBF3734-F847-4F1B-B953-A605434DC1E7} - does not exist

Click to expand...

That's likely the problem. I mean, it is a problem. Let's try to fix that and see what else remains: can you open an administrator command window and run this:
```
regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\ExplorerPatcher\ep_weather_host_stub.dll"
```
If all is okay, it should show a message with "DllRegisterServer in ep_weather_host_stub.dll succeeded". Afterwards, restart File Explorer and see if it works. If not, please post any output from the command here. Thanks.

When I tried to perform the command you described, it shows this error message:

File ep_weather_host_stub.dll itself exists and administrator has full control over it (I specifically checked this).
Advice "debug it" may be good, but I guess it can be done only by developer with debugger using the test DLL complied with debug symbols.

Another possible problem may be in lack of "dependent .DLL files". List of DLL references in current version of file:

ep_weather_host_stub.dll - this file
RPCRT4.dll - C:\Windows\System32\ ver. 10.0.22000.434
KERNEL32.dll - C:\Windows\System32\ ver. 10.0.22000.434
ole32.dll - C:\Windows\System32\ ver. 10.0.22000.120
VCRUNTIME140.dll - C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ ver. 14.24.28127.4
no such file in C:\Windows\System32\
api-ms-win-crt-runtime-l1-1-0.dll - C:\Windows\System32\downlevel\, ver. 10.0.22000.1

Apparently the problem is that I don't have 64-bit Visual C++ runtime VCRUNTIME140.dll, which is not provided by typical Windows 11 installation, but may be installed later by third-party software, so people may even not know that it already exists. You should have it too with IDE you use for programming (VS 2017 maybe). So, need to make sure that end users have this runtime installed. Or replace the calls to more common DLL like msvcrt.dll, of course if it's possible. It's my current supposition.

But I think I still don't fully understand: the reference to VCRUNTIME140.dll also exists in ep_setup.exe, how could it work without this DLL? It should show similar error.

Hi All,
I installed the explorerpatcher software, I'm using it on windows 11 pro version 21H2 OS build 22000.469 . So far it seems like my only issue is the following: Before I installed the explorer patcher software I was able to see if I had any new messages in the mail app (outlook) on my taskbar icon. Now since I installed the software that function doesn't function properly, also now when I go into taskbar behaviors that selection as well as the show my taskbar on all displays is grayed out & not active. I miss being able to be notified when I receive new mail like I was receiving, I'm still hoping that I'll be able to figure out what's causing this issue. By the way, I'm currently running version 22000.469.41.16 of the explorerpatcher software.
Thanks
Update: I found the cause of the issue I was having, I had the taskbar icons set to the small size, I decided to change the back to the default (large) size. As soon as I did so my mail app started showing notifications of new mail again. Also, in the taskbar behaviors area the show badges (unread messages counter) on taskbar apps is no longer grayed out but is now active again and it's checked on. Now I'm wondering if I really need to keep the explorer patcher installed ?

Don't have any such problem here. Maybe load default settings?