New Version of ExplorerPatcher

valinet · Mar 17, 2022

krofi said:
Since the github issues and discussion areas are closed for input I'm posting this here instead, I hope that's ok!

I ran into an issue and I've found a workaround.

Issue: Opening up files on a network drive causes the associated apps to terminate immediately, usually without any error dialog.
I ran into this issue with the apps: Paint.net and Typora.
The issue did not appear in these apps: Notepad, Notepad++, XnView MP, MS Office suite programs, Adobe suite programs, Sketchup, AutoCAD

I solved the issue by uninstalling ExplorerPatcher and then reinstalling it. I compared the exported settings before and after and found that the only thing that was different was this...

Doesn't work:

Code:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ExplorerPatcher] ;"Virtualized_{D17F1E1A-5919-4427-8F89-A1A8503CA3EB}_RegisterAsShellExtension"=dword:00000001

Works:

Code:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ExplorerPatcher] ;"Virtualized_{D17F1E1A-5919-4427-8F89-A1A8503CA3EB}_RegisterAsShellExtension"=dword:00000000

This is the same as going into Properties -> File Explorer and unchecking Register as shell extension.

Further details can be found in previous issues-threads: Typora and Paint.net.

So in summation: Registering ExplorerPatcher as a shell extension seems to cause issues with some applications when opening/saving files on a network drive. Unsure as to why, but disabling the shell extension registration is a usable workaround at the moment.

Cheers,
Krofi

This is exactly the reason why I have closed the forums. No one seems to pay attention most of the material there. On the "Properties" page where that option is located, there is a big link pointing to this page: Using ExplorerPatcher as shell extension · valinet/ExplorerPatcher Wiki. In there, it describes that option in vast detail. Of course, no one has time for that. Which is unfortunate; reading that could have saved you the time to determine what was causing this "issue". Ofc injecting all applications on the system with some random DLL is not necessarily a good idea. I don't routinely run that configuration, so it's rarely tested, seeing how I am the only one that did/does any meaningful testing.

As for the report, yeah, what is causing that? I don't see any mention in your report about this. Instead, you "solve" the problem by disabling that... ofc disabling the option "solves" it. You say "Works"/"Doesn't work". What? With it disabled, the functionality it's intended to provide doesn't work, ofc. Suggesting to disable a feature when there is a problem with it is the typical workaround a lot of people were filling the beloved official forums with, that leads to no real progress. Instead, what's really useful is to debug the issue, see what exactly causes it and repair it in the code.

Not to mention, I never understood, and in this case stands, the real reason people enable that. Or any option for that matter, without figuring it out a bit beforehand. Only enable what you know about and is necessary, not random stuff to "check it out" and forget about it. It reminds me of the time when the program was called "ExplorerPatcher for Windows 11" and people were running it on Windows 10 and were expecting it to magically work.

I mean, yeah, don't get me wrong, but the workaround is not a workaround. The stock config has that option off. If you want that option, your workaround doesn't provide you with its intended effect minus the issue, it just disables it altogether, you know what I mean?

krofi · Mar 17, 2022

You seem frustrated and that's understandable. It was certainly not my intention to cause annoyance. I'm very happy to see that someone out there was smart enough to create such an awesome tool as this and I wanted to try to help.

Unfortunately I don't understand how any of this dll injection wizardry works so I have tried to help in the only way I could figure out: providing a workaround for users who might be experiencing the same issue and have no idea what's causing it (for me, for example, I thought it was Typora, then Paint.net then Kaspersky and then an audio driver).

Also I hoped by reporting the issue it could potentially lead others who are more familiar with the code or the type of code used here, being able to figure out what's going on.

I never understood, and in this case stands, the real reason people enable that

Well, I can only speak for me... but in my case it was something I enabled since there were two options below that required it to be enabled (the ones marked with **) and those sounded interesting.

I didn't notice the issue I reported above until several days later when using one of the affected apps and at that point I didn't really have any reason - with my limited understanding - to suspect ExplorerPatcher at all. My searches across the internet for people with similar issues yielded no results, so I figured that reporting the problem and a workaround would make some users happy at least.

Cheers,
Krofi

hdmi · Mar 18, 2022

@valinet

Maybe add a popup dialog asking to confirm "Are you sure that you've read the docs?" followed by another popup dialog with "Are you sure that you're sure?" and see if that works, then (also maybe) consider to reinstate 'Discussions'. :)

valinet · Mar 18, 2022

The window mentions that options marked with ** don’t work in Open/Save file dialogs unless you use EP as shell extension as well. It doesn’t say they don’t work in Explorer without that, it just says they don’t work in other apps that use file dialogs.

Anyway, ideally this should be fixed. I am not frustrated by you not providing a fix, but by repeatedly calling this a workaround, when it clearly is not, and I explained why. Your post provides a repro case at least, that’s useful, thanks.

EP is not there to annoy you, so no double/triple “are you sure” popups. Users should be aware of what things roughly do. The options are plenty explained. Before randomly wandering on Google, there’s the wiki filled with info. The app contains links to that. There is the source code as well. The knowledge is out there, but can’t magically be forced onto everyone’s screen.

How would having the official forums open have helped in this regard?

valinet · Mar 18, 2022

I have checked it out in a VM, I cannot reproduce it. I tried with Paint.NET, it works fine, opens network files fine.

> but in my case it was something I enabled since there were two options below that required it to be enabled (the ones marked with **) and those sounded interesting.

Which options? Would be very useful to specify which so I can test. Understand my frustration?

As for apps crashing, again, on the wiki and the forums, there are several posts that mention how to collect crash dumps which are very useful in trying to identify what causes problems. Again, the material is there, I don't know why everyone has to be personally handed guided in that direction:

* Reporting problems · valinet/ExplorerPatcher Wiki
* Tutorial: How to attempt identifying a crashing condition? · Discussion #881 · valinet/ExplorerPatcher

XEmberX · Mar 18, 2022

AndreTen said:
What version do you run? Windows and ExplorerPatcher?

Hi, sorry for the late response. The version of Explorer Patcher I'm running is 22000.556.42.37, & my version of Windows 11 is 10.0.22000.556. Thank you =)

AndreTen · Mar 18, 2022

XEmberX said:
Hi, sorry for the late response. The version of Explorer Patcher I'm running is 22000.556.42.37, & my version of Windows 11 is 10.0.22000.556. Thank you =)

And what's wrong with notification icon? Can't tell from your picture

XEmberX · Mar 18, 2022

AndreTen said:
And what's wrong with notification icon? Can't tell from your picture

The wifi & volume icons are mostly gray & white, with a bit of black. The notification center icon looks a bit off as well. It almost blends into the blue taskbar. Is it supposed to be all black? Or all white?
Heres another picture:

AndreTen · Mar 18, 2022

XEmberX said:
The wifi & volume icons are mostly gray & white, with a bit of black. The notification center icon looks a bit off as well. It almost blends into the blue taskbar. Is it supposed to be all black? Or all white?
Heres another picture: View attachment 24701

Hmm, this is supposed to be fixed in your version. Maybe reset settings (load default) and update to 42.38

Can't remember where is that default setting

XEmberX · Mar 18, 2022

AndreTen said:
Hmm, this is supposed to be fixed in your version. Maybe reset settings (load default) and update to 42.38

Can't remember where is that default setting

Hi, thank you for your reply. I loaded the default settings, but trying to update said that I had the latest version. So I then uninstalled explorer patcher, and then reinstalled with the latest version from github.

Edit: Just realized that I installed the latest stable one, 37. I'll try 38.

Update: I've tried 42.38, & unfortunately my icons are still grey.

AndreTen · Mar 18, 2022

XEmberX said:
Hi, thank you for your reply. I loaded the default settings, but trying to update said that I had the latest version. So I then uninstalled explorer patcher, and then reinstalled with the latest version from github.

Edit: Just realized that I installed the latest stable one, 37. I'll try 38.

Update: I've tried 42.38, & unfortunately my icons are still grey.

And if you change some color setting in System personalization, turn off any fancy setting, and then turn them on again one at the time

XEmberX · Mar 18, 2022

All my settings were already off, except 'transparency effects'. I tried turning on, then off my settings. But with no change.

AndreTen · Mar 18, 2022

Sorry then, admit I have no idea. Maybe the author @valinet could have one? Why would the icons and text have different colors..

catweazel · Mar 19, 2022

Hallo,
i have installed Version 22000.556.42.38 on Windows 11 22000.556, it is working fine, but only the Weather does not working.
if I set the hook Show weather on the taskbar, so immediately a x is set again.
The dlls ep_weather_host.dll and ep_weather_host_stub.dll in the folder are registered.
The %APPDATA%\ExplorerPatcher\ep_weather_host folder does not exist.
And if I set the value HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\People to 1, only the Contacts icon appears.
What's going wrong?

EDIT:
Solved,
i have Restore Defaults Settings ( about - restore Default settings ), and now it is working fine with Mülheim an der Ruhr.

Lewis4853 · Mar 19, 2022

valinet said:
To chip in on this, I saw that as well. The reason for it is rather simple: `AppResolver.dll` is among the libraries responsible for making this work. For Windows 11, it was changed so that it always talks with the pinned items backend from the Windows 11 menu, rather than the Windows 10 one.

The good news is that using the version from 22000.51 still works with current builds and allows pinning to Windows 10 Start from whichever program loads it (it has a check in the form of the `StartDocked::ShouldUseStartDocked` function that queries the famous `Start_ShowClassicMode` registry entry). I will implement code in the coming pre-release to have ExplorerPatcher use this older DLL which will enable pinning to Start to work again from File Explorer, for example.

By default, it will work only from folder windows from File Explorer. For it to work from Open/Save file dialogs, or folder views like Everything Search, for example, you have to register the program as shell extension, which will load a minimal implementation of ExplorerPatcher into all processes on the system that load Explorer-related things, so that it can provide this redirection to the older DLL there as well. Although, I don't really recommend this option (the reasons why are described here: Using ExplorerPatcher as shell extension · valinet/ExplorerPatcher Wiki), it is there. The default experience of being able to right click something in File Explorer, click "Pin to Start" and have it appear in the Windows 10 menu I think will do it for the majority of people.

Btw, the Windows 10 and Windows 11 menus have different storage places for the tiles data (what tiles you have pinned), so if you pin something in the 10 menu, it won't automatically appear in the 11 menu and vice versa. Also, when using the 10 menu, there will be a small bug let's call it (or inconvenience, maybe), in that right clicking an already pinned item in Explorer will show the "Unpin from Start" entry but clicking it won't produce any result. Ofc, unpinning from Start will still work, so I don't think that's such a bug problem. What is important is that pinning from Explorer will work with the 10 menu, and yeah, I got that to work, it will be there. and ofc, if I figure out how to solve that, I will solve that as well, but I don't want to delay this until I determine that, because I don't think it is worth it.

Thanks

I don't understand half of that, but I'm still unable to get items to pin in the Windows 10 menu. Let's take Windows Sandbox as an example.

Search Sandbox > Open File Location > Open File Location on the shortcut > Right click WindowsSandbox.exe and "Pin to Start"

That's right isn't it? However nothing is pinned to the start menu. Am I doing something wrong or am I mistaken that this is not implemented?

Thanks

The-Hive · Mar 19, 2022

I have updated to windows dev build 22579.1 and ExplorerPatcher 22000.558.42.38 and can confirm the transparency has gone everything is working fine did have a bit of trouble getting the weather to work I kept getting no internet (even though there was) but that seems seems fine after a couple of restarts.

Lim_Dul · Mar 19, 2022

Hello there! Read that this is the unofficial support forum for Explorer Patcher, but I'm coming with a solution, not a problem.

Just to let let everyone know, I've had a problem displaying the Weather Widget on EP Version 22000.556.42.38.
Selecting the setting just deselected it again and resetting data didn't work.
See following video:

Watch Weather Widget | Streamable

Watch "Weather Widget" on Streamable.

streamable.com

After checking the Wiki as to where EP stores its weather data I noticed that there was no %APPDATA%\ExplorerPatcher\ep_weather_host folder on my system - in fact, there wasn't even an ExplorerPatcher folder.

This was similar to post #394 above but I didn't reset the settings to default.
Instead, I created the first level of the directory structure until %APPDATA%\ExplorerPatcher et voila, EP created the ep_weather_host directory itself and the widget started working.

I hope this might help someone. Also, this might be a bug? Don't know. Even installed the WebView2 component without seemingly needing it and EP was registered as a shell extension as well.

valinet · Mar 20, 2022

@Lim_Dul Indeed, it was a bug. I never tested this scenario, but indeed, there could be a case where nothing was setting up the `%APPDATA%\ExplorerPatcher` directory so the widget was failing to start because it couldn't create its working subdirectory. I have fixed this now and have published a new release. Thank you for pointing it out.

@The-Hive That's good to hear, I am glad that it now works on the Insider Preview as well.

@Lewis4853 That's been slightly changed, due to some other incompatibilities arising from using that. Instead, now, the recommended method for pinning something from File Explorer is: open "Properties", go to "Start menu", click "Pin tiles to Windows 10 Start menu from File Explorer". A folder window will open. Use that to locate whatever you like to pin and right click and "Pin to Start" as usual. If it doesn't in from the first try, try 1-2 times more and it will work.

@XEmberX Sorry, I don't know.

Thanks

Wynona · Mar 20, 2022

I have reinstalled Explorer Patcher and now have my Taskbar on top (using the workaround by @valinet). I also have QuickLaunch working.

I have the current version of Windows 11 (to be on the same page with my students) and continue to work with and test the functions of EP.

hdmi · Mar 20, 2022

valinet said:
@Lewis4853 That's been slightly changed, due to some other incompatibilities arising from using that. Instead, now, the recommended method for pinning something from File Explorer is: open "Properties", go to "Start menu", click "Pin tiles to Windows 10 Start menu from File Explorer". A folder window will open. Use that to locate whatever you like to pin and right click and "Pin to Start" as usual. If it doesn't in from the first try, try 1-2 times more and it will work.

I can pin C:\tools\DriverStoreExplorer.v0.11.72\Rapr.exe to the Windows 11 Start Menu, but in the Windows 10 Start Menu it never shows up, no matter how hard I keep trying. The context menu of search results (that appear in that specific File Explorer window after I type in rapr in its search box) also has a bad tendency to keep closing by itself quasi randomly.

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