Interesting find in Whistler Build 2428

[TheChrississin]

Hi guys,

I've been experimenting with Whistler 2428 in VMWare and while looking at the task bar options, I found a picture including the start button of 2415 lab06, with the old windows logo inside of Luna.
http://www.betaarchive.com/imageupload/ ... .87714.PNG

The original start button in 2415 (no screenshot because build isn't leaked, this photo was taken at a presentation and was fetched off BetaArchives):
http://www.betaarchive.com/imageupload/ ... .22788.jpg

Maybe some people haven't found it yet so I thought I'd like to share it!

[betaluva]

interesting find ( i think other people have found this before) it be nicer if you found a 2415 iso lol!

[Windows OS]

Hi guys,

I've been experimenting with Whistler 2428 in VMWare and while looking at the task bar options, I found a picture including the start button of 2415 lab06, with the old windows logo inside of Luna.
http://www.betaarchive.com/imageupload/ ... .87714.PNG

The original start button in 2415 (no screenshot because build isn't leaked, this photo was taken at a presentation and was fetched off BetaArchives):
http://www.betaarchive.com/imageupload/ ... .22788.jpg

Maybe some people haven't found it yet so I thought I'd like to share it!

-Chris

Cool. Wish 2415 was leaked. I would love to see how Luna looks with the old Windows Flag, outside of those crappy low resolution pictures. However, I noticed on the presentation picture, the Start menu looks different (different icons, nice transition gradient on the left pane), while on the screenshot on the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties, the menu looks identical to XP, just the button is different.

[TheChrississin]

Cool. Wish 2415 was leaked. I would love to see how Luna looks with the old Windows Flag, outside of those crappy low resolution pictures. However, I noticed on the presentation picture, the Start menu looks different (different icons, nice transition gradient on the left pane), while on the screenshot on the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties, the menu looks identical to XP, just the button is different.

Yeah, I agree. I would have loved to see 2415 leaked, explore the very first version of Luna with the old Windows flag and stuff!
I noticed the same, maybe they already updated that or included it in earlier builds with Watercolor, but they definitely took the 2415 Luna start button

[TheChrississin]

I recently tried to recreate the start button how it might have looked in 2415. I could upload the explorer.exe, if needed!

[ovctvct]

Not really a discovery, I already know about it, and you can't be sure if it is really from 2415.lab06, since there's no buildtag in that low res picture.

[TheChrississin]

This low-res picture is actually not a screenshot of the real 2415.lab06 of course, you can also see that in the start menu which is the same as in the RTM Windows XP. 2415's start menu looked quite different, as seen on the conference picture. But the start button looks like the one in the 2415.lab06, which is afaik the only build to include this start button. Correct me if I'm wrong!

[Windows OS]

That's what I said on my post:

However, I noticed on the presentation picture, the Start menu looks different (different icons, nice transition gradient on the left pane), while on the screenshot on the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties, the menu looks identical to XP, just the button is different.

Start from 2415 (with gradient [vaguely] marked):

Personally, I think the 2415 Start Menu looks really good judging from the picture. I really like that transition gradient effect on the left pane. Again, wish we had at least a screen cap of that build.
Anyway, I got a idea. Maybe we could try to use the 2428 Luna theme on a build that still used the Watercolor theme, like 2419. What will happen? Will it even work?

[Lukas Marsik]

Anyway, I got a idea. Maybe we could try to use the 2428 Luna theme on a build that still used the Watercolor theme, like 2419. What will happen? Will it even work?

The theme format has changed drastically between 2419 and 2428

[TheChrississin]

On 2410, Luna theme didn't work, also when renaming the file from .msstyles to .msthemes (obviously). The explorer.exe gave me an error, saying that something's wrong with shell32.dll, so I replaced that dll and it bluescreened on the login screen. I don't think we'd get to see that, unless someone's willing to port it to 2419 or earlier. It'd be really cool to see though!

-Edit:
This is the error Whistler is giving me when logging on:



After this, the screen is just blank and I have to restart the original explorer.exe using task manager. What I noticed is that shell32.dll is double the size in 2428 (6MB) than it is in 2410 (3MB).

[MSUser2013]

On 2410, Luna theme didn't work, also when renaming the file from .msstyles to .msthemes (obviously). The explorer.exe gave me an error, saying that something's wrong with shell32.dll, so I replaced that dll and it bluescreened on the login screen. I don't think we'd get to see that, unless someone's willing to port it to 2419 or earlier. It'd be really cool to see though!

I've tried porting Luna to 2410 a long time ago by transplanting the BMPs from Luna to Watercolor, It didn't see the theme due to its digital signature being broken, So to do that, You need to patch uxtheme.dll so it can use unsigned themes, I don't know if that's possible to do on 2419 or earlier.

[TheChrississin]

On 2410, Luna theme didn't work, also when renaming the file from .msstyles to .msthemes (obviously). The explorer.exe gave me an error, saying that something's wrong with shell32.dll, so I replaced that dll and it bluescreened on the login screen. I don't think we'd get to see that, unless someone's willing to port it to 2419 or earlier. It'd be really cool to see though!

I've tried porting Luna to 2410 a long time ago by transplanting the BMPs from Luna to Watercolor, It didn't see the theme due to its digital signature being broken, So to do that, You need to patch uxtheme.dll so it can use unsigned themes, I don't know if that's possible to do on 2419 or earlier.

I don't know if that's possible, as the official uxpatcher doesn't support anything earlier than XP RTM (I think). So I believe that either, uxpatcher would bluescreen on me or it would break uxtheme.dll so you have to patch it manually. I will try running uxpatcher on it and see!

-Edit:
Just tried Uxtheme MultiPatcher and UxStyle (second advertised as working for Windows Whistler Escrow Builds) but both gave me errors..

[MSUser2013]

Just tried Uxtheme MultiPatcher and UxStyle (second advertised as working for Windows Whistler Escrow Builds) but both gave me errors..

What are the errors? Also Whistler Escrow Builds are Pre-RTMs, Which means UxStyle is intended to work on Build 2535 at earliest, May work on 2505 at a stretch but that's not what we want to patch, So if no patcher works, Then you have to patch it manually.

[TheChrississin]

Just tried Uxtheme MultiPatcher and UxStyle (second advertised as working for Windows Whistler Escrow Builds) but both gave me errors..

What are the errors? Also Whistler Escrow Builds are Pre-RTMs, Which means UxStyle is intended to work on Build 2535 at earliest, May work on 2505 at a stretch but that's not what we want to patch, So if no patcher works, Then you have to patch it manually.

This is the error for Uxtheme MultiPatcher:



And this for UxStyle:



The second one could probably be resolved in some way, but I don't exactly know how. And to be honest, I don't really know how to patch it manually.. xD

[Windows OS]

There are ports of Watercolor for XP RTM, for those who are curious:
http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/32604-watercolor-v43/
However, this might just be a complete rebuild of Watercolor for the XP theme engine. It is still cool to have the theme for XP.

[TheChrississin]

There are ports of Watercolor for XP RTM, for those who are curious:
http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/32604-watercolor-v43/
However, this might just be a complete rebuild of Watercolor for the XP theme engine. It is still cool to have the theme for XP.

Interesting! However, I would really love to see that for Windows 7. I think it's pretty easy to make it by modifying the classic scheme of it.

[johnleakedfan]

There are ports of Watercolor for XP RTM, for those who are curious:
http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/32604-watercolor-v43/
However, this might just be a complete rebuild of Watercolor for the XP theme engine. It is still cool to have the theme for XP.

Thanks for the theme, I tried to look for this before

Offtopic Comment

When I tried to download that, it gave me a Avast Antivirus Notification Alert and Detected it and it had [Trj] on it

[Windows OS]

Offtopic Comment

When I tried to download that, it gave me a Avast Antivirus Notification Alert and Detected it and it had [Trj] on it

According to Avast's security blog, Trj, or Win32:Patched, is just patched Windows System Files. I think it just doesn't like the patched shellstyle.dll files for the theme. Plus, I ran VirusTotal on the file, only Symantec said it was anything bad, not that even, since it was detected as "WS.Reputation.1", which is not really a type of malicious file, but more like a label Symantec uses for files "have a low reputation score based on analyzing data from Symantec’s community of users and therefore are likely to be security risks". This is infamous in the security community, with most files with this are just false positives. I never had any problems with the theme myself. So the file is safe.

[MicroBetaMan]

This site seems to have a lot of information about 2415. Cannot find a way to translate it though. There are multiple pictures of the builds and some misc. links at the bottom. I really wonder what it's trying to say. For all we know, they have the original beta copy with them...

http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/arti ... /ces02.htm

[Windows OS]

This site seems to have a lot of information about 2415. Cannot find a way to translate it though. There are multiple pictures of the builds and some misc. links at the bottom. I really wonder what it's trying to say. For all we know, they have the original beta copy with them...

http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/arti ... /ces02.htm

Use Bing Translator set to Japanese. It's a bit messed up, and I cannot get a link directly to the translation, but it works:
http://www.bing.com/translator/

[frogz2007]

This is the one build of Whistler I wish would leak. the Windows 9x flag on the button looks so good compared to the final, boring XP flag. I wish that somebody would come forward and leak it for us to enjoy.

[DiskingRound]

@MicroBetaMan: Actually, the build was shown at some conference (CES 2001 I believe) so I highly doubt they have the binaries of this build.
Anyway, I really am interested where this project goes, I'll keep an eye on it.

[Schezo]

This is the error for Uxtheme MultiPatcher:

The "Windows was not able to process the application binding information." error from the screenshot sounds strikingly similar to the problem of running programs with a newer manifest file in some early Whistler builds, even though the manifest format should have been finalized by this build.

You could try to use a resource editor like Resource Hacker to change/remove the manifest from the program anyway.

[Windows OS]

The "Windows was not able to process the application binding information." error from the screenshot sounds strikingly similar to the problem of running programs with a newer manifest file in some early Whistler builds, even though the manifest format should have been finalized by this build.

You could try to use a resource editor like Resource Hacker to change/remove the manifest from the program anyway.

I was able to get UXTheme Multi-Patcher running. However, when it was doing the patch, Windows Installer complained that improper command line parameters were used. It might had still patched it, but I don't know, since I do not have the modified Luna theme. Chris, could you upload your modified Luna theme for 2419? And could anyone help me with the error?

UPDATE: I noticed that on the OS line on the program, it says "Microsoft Windows 2000 (Beta) 32-bit". It might be detecting that this is a beta copy of Whistler and it might be trying to patch it, but there is still the Windows Installer error. If anyone wants the Virtual Hard Disk image of the machine, I can upload it to Mega for you.

Screenshot #1 (UXTheme Multi-Patcher Splash Screen)

Screenshot #2 (Windows Installer Error)

Screenshot #3 (UXTheme Reporting Success)

[TheChrississin]

This site seems to have a lot of information about 2415. Cannot find a way to translate it though. There are multiple pictures of the builds and some misc. links at the bottom. I really wonder what it's trying to say. For all we know, they have the original beta copy with them...

http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/arti ... /ces02.htm

Thanks a lot for this website, it's really cool to see more pictures of it!

The "Windows was not able to process the application binding information." error from the screenshot sounds strikingly similar to the problem of running programs with a newer manifest file in some early Whistler builds, even though the manifest format should have been finalized by this build.

You could try to use a resource editor like Resource Hacker to change/remove the manifest from the program anyway.

I will have a look at it later. Do you know by any chance where the manifest is located in resource hacker?

I was able to get UXTheme Multi-Patcher running. However, when it was doing the patch, Windows Installer complained that improper command line parameters were used. It might had still patched it, but I don't know, since I do not have the modified Luna theme. Chris, could you upload your modified Luna theme for 2419?

I don't have the Luna theme for 2419 (not sure if you mean me or MSUser2013, sorry xD ), but if you want the modified explorer.exe for 2428 (with the start button being a recreation of the 2415 start button), here you go:

https://mega.co.nz/#!CEAwXQqT!_yfkNOoH9 ... RGWGPwSnhc

In order to use it (for the people who don't know), you have to paste this into the windows directory (I named it Explorer2.exe so you can still use the old Explorer if any errors occur), then run regedit, go to key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" and change "Shell" from "Explorer.exe" to "Explorer2.exe", then restart.

If anyone wants the Virtual Hard Disk image of the machine, I can upload it to Mega for you.

I'd be greatful if you upload it!