Unlock "MS Help" on Windows 8 build 7927/7955

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Guindows
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Unlock "MS Help" on Windows 8 build 7927/7955

Post by Guindows »

On Windows 8 very early builds exists a very rare and interesting Metro application called "MS Help". Some screenshots of this application show "Access denied. For details see %temp%\mshelp.log"

What is this application, how unlock it (Open it on a Windows 8 early build) and how remove the Access denied Error Message?
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Meow
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Re: Unlock "MS Help" on Windows 8 build 7927/7955

Post by Meow »

It probably uses an internal microsoft server for authentication, so you cannot unlock it.

Guindows
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Re: Unlock "MS Help" on Windows 8 build 7927/7955

Post by Guindows »

What could be done to make it at least work or show a connection error would have to try to emulate an internal Microsoft server (Example of this is Escargot, which emulates a Microsoft server to be able to use Messenger) and then try to divert the connections to connect to the emulated server and not to the server for internal testing.
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Re: Unlock "MS Help" on Windows 8 build 7927/7955

Post by Meow »

Guindows wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 10:28 pm
What could be done to make it at least work or show a connection error would have to try to emulate an internal Microsoft server (Example of this is Escargot, which emulates a Microsoft server to be able to use Messenger) and then try to divert the connections to connect to the emulated server and not to the server for internal testing.
Sure, go ahead and try it. If you could get the authentication to work, the app might get unlocked and you could view the pages.
However, the app might be a placeholder for some other help app or the authentication server and help pages are gone (won’t be surprising if they are, considering that 8 is no longer in development and hasn’t been for 8 years)
Try looking at the log file to see what is going wrong that makes it show the access denied error.

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Re: Unlock "MS Help" on Windows 8 build 7927/7955

Post by gus33000 »

MSHelp was a decoy name for what is effectively the store app. It is present on even earlier builds than 7927. The access denied error message you see appears because the server has been shutdown. Unfortunately as the entirety of the store app was online with html pages, except the error page, that is all you will ever see. It isn't just some "authentication".

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