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A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

devblogs.microsoft.com

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Re: A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

#21

Post by throwawaaarrgh »

saurik wrote: post #5

Frankly, it is really annoying when developers working at one of the large closed-source platform oligopolists blame their users for trying to work around the deficiencies (or even outright hostile "business model" optimizations) in their software by whatever scant means are left to them: maybe if Microsoft didn't keep removing good functionality and stopped forcing bad "features" on everyone, fewer people would see…

You must do BJJ, to be able to twist yourself into such knots to blame Microsoft for a 3rd party vendor's unsupported buggy hacks. No mention of how the 3rd party vendor lies by omission to the users by not telling them that their software is very literally using unsupported, buggy means to accomplish its goals. Leaving the user to blame Microsoft for the crash, when if the user knew the truth, they may feel differently, and maybe not even use the 3rd party software. But it feels better to blame the big bad corporation, despite the fact that they have not lied, and are just trying to fix security issues.

Re: A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

#22

Post by n6h6 »

vesinisa wrote: post #7
Ciantic wrote: post #6

I know it must be frustrating from Microsoft's standpoint, but those are needed because they keep changing things. Start All Back is one very popular explorer.exe patch that makes the Windows 11 taskbar function a lot like Windows 10. For one thing, it allows you to move the taskbar again. I've also made an explorer.exe in-memory patch to disable flashing taskbar buttons in Windows 10, it injected itself to WndProc a…

> flashing taskbar buttons Oh geez these are annoying! I've spent hours trying to find a setting to disable the flashing taskbar on the Teams client on my corporate issued Win10 laptop. The best I've found is to keep the Teams client minimized in tray just to avoid this behavior. It boggles my mind there's no way to disable this feature that is so distracting it almost makes working impossible whenever I forget to ki…

I am glad someone else agrees. It's absolutely horrible!

Re: A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

#23

Post by throwawaaarrgh »

bombcar wrote: post #19

Kind of sad. Even from this blog, he admits that the Microsoft of old would test software and see if it worked; the Microsoft of now obviously knows of the existence of these shell enhancements, but clearly doesn’t test patches against them at all.

That's a lot of money and time to spend on supporting someone else's bug-riddled software. You can't test literally all software that exists before you release a security patch. Just imagine testing every single solitary Windows application that exists, or has every existed, just to see if one of them crashes due to intentionally doing the wrong thing. What are they supposed to do, fix the 3rd party software? Delay fixing the security hole?

Testing is the responsibility of the 3rd party (in addition to using supported methods). If the 3rd party was part of a preview release program, they could test changes before they are officially released.

Re: A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

#24

Post by userbinator »

jackewiehose wrote: post #11

There is an interview with Raymond Chen where he is trying to defend the reason why they crippled the taskbar with Windows 11 [1]. Watching that I was just thinking NO NO NO - it worked fine for the last 25 years and there can be absolutely no reason why they had to destroy the taskbar now. He deserves every headache he gets with these support requests. Or to quote this comment of the linked article: > There wouldn’t…

where he is trying to defend the reason why they crippled the taskbar with Windows 11

Do you have a timestamp? I'd rather not watch a 2h long video, even at 2x speed.

Re: A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

#25

Post by mauvia »

jackewiehose wrote: post #11

There is an interview with Raymond Chen where he is trying to defend the reason why they crippled the taskbar with Windows 11 [1]. Watching that I was just thinking NO NO NO - it worked fine for the last 25 years and there can be absolutely no reason why they had to destroy the taskbar now. He deserves every headache he gets with these support requests. Or to quote this comment of the linked article: > There wouldn’t…

Hey is there a particular timestamp for the taskbar specifically? I'm interested in what he'd say about it.

Re: A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

#26

Post by userbinator »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #23
bombcar wrote: post #19

Kind of sad. Even from this blog, he admits that the Microsoft of old would test software and see if it worked; the Microsoft of now obviously knows of the existence of these shell enhancements, but clearly doesn’t test patches against them at all.

That's a lot of money and time to spend on supporting someone else's bug-riddled software. You can't test literally all software that exists before you release a security patch. Just imagine testing every single solitary Windows application that exists, or has every existed, just to see if one of them crashes due to intentionally doing the wrong thing. What are they supposed to do, fix the 3rd party software? Delay f…

That's a lot of money and time to spend on supporting someone else's bug-riddled software.

Consider that it's money and time that MS spent to get into their position today. They built their empire on "back-compat is king", and betraying that principle gives far less reason for their customers to continue using their software instead of moving to alternatives.

Re: A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

#27

Post by hiatus »

Ciantic wrote: post #9
kristianp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have to turn off all system file modification detection to do these hacks? Sounds risky.

That is the weird part. My explorer.exe patch to disable flashing taskbar buttons was functioning with Microsoft Defender turned on for the whole lifetime of Windows 10 I used it. I didn't even need a UAC prompt to patch the memory. Nothing detects it, even though it goes and adds assembly instructions to three locations in the memory with WriteProcessMemory etc. It's not working by injecting DLL, it just modifies th…

Just curious, why AHK over C? Easier for users to run themselves?

Re: A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

#28

Post by red_trumpet »

userbinator wrote: post #24
jackewiehose wrote: post #11

There is an interview with Raymond Chen where he is trying to defend the reason why they crippled the taskbar with Windows 11 [1]. Watching that I was just thinking NO NO NO - it worked fine for the last 25 years and there can be absolutely no reason why they had to destroy the taskbar now. He deserves every headache he gets with these support requests. Or to quote this comment of the linked article: > There wouldn’t…

where he is trying to defend the reason why they crippled the taskbar with Windows 11 Do you have a timestamp? I'd rather not watch a 2h long video, even at 2x speed.

At ~0:30:30 he talks about taskbar grouping, so I guess that would be the correct place to look at?

Re: A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

#29

Post by jackewiehose »

userbinator wrote: post #24
jackewiehose wrote: post #11

There is an interview with Raymond Chen where he is trying to defend the reason why they crippled the taskbar with Windows 11 [1]. Watching that I was just thinking NO NO NO - it worked fine for the last 25 years and there can be absolutely no reason why they had to destroy the taskbar now. He deserves every headache he gets with these support requests. Or to quote this comment of the linked article: > There wouldn’t…

where he is trying to defend the reason why they crippled the taskbar with Windows 11 Do you have a timestamp? I'd rather not watch a 2h long video, even at 2x speed.

You get a tool tip when hovering the mouse over the progress bar. But now I see the chapters are also listed in the video description, which I should have linked to in the first place:

00:30:35 Taskbar grouping https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDicLHBvQQM&t=1835s

Re: A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

#30

Post by magicalhippo »

nottorp wrote: post #10
Ciantic wrote: post #6

I know it must be frustrating from Microsoft's standpoint, but those are needed because they keep changing things. Start All Back is one very popular explorer.exe patch that makes the Windows 11 taskbar function a lot like Windows 10. For one thing, it allows you to move the taskbar again. I've also made an explorer.exe in-memory patch to disable flashing taskbar buttons in Windows 10, it injected itself to WndProc a…

> For one thing, it allows you to move the taskbar again. But but... think of their support costs if people accidentally move the taskbar! They have to remove your options or they'll starve!

I've literally spent over 30 minutes on a support call with someone who had accidentally moved and resized their taskbar.

All I could get out of the user was "half the screen is grey".

I quickly figured out it was probably the taskbar, and I tried asking if it was the top or bottom half, or left or right. "Half" was the reply...

After a lot of attempts and little progress, I made a breakthrough by asking in which corner the clock was. "Bottom left", aha! And with that I managed to guide the user to dragging the taskbar back and resizing it properly.

Granted this was back in Windows 98 where the taskbar wasn't locked, so was rather easy to do, it was probably their first PC and they were non-native so language barrier.

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