Win8 Release Preview Encrypted UIFILES

Blizo

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So it looks like MS went and encrypted the UIFiles. That means no editing the twinui.dll, explorerframe.dll, authui.dll, and others at all.

I tried injecting an unencrypted UIFile into a dll and it crashed windows.

Im sure HEX editing might still be possible, but it looks like MS really doesn't want anyone messing with their new baby, METRO.

They took away the start button/menu, they plan on removing aero, media player is up in the air, the logon is now controlled by METRO.

So for now, it looks like its not possible. Im sure someone will break the encryption and release patches, but till that day comes, don't expect any major third party UI customization apps. MS blocked it all.

I think im about to hang my hat and call it quits on writing apps after almost 15 years of doing this.

-Blizo
 

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Ok, its been like 6 months and I have thought about this a lot.

The UIFile is not encrypted.

For a while I thought it might be a hex file, since all resource viewers show the hex addresses. Then I thought, if MS made a change to the hex uifile, they would also need to change the source code to access the new hex address. I figure this is way to much work (I may be wrong).

So today I decided to dig up some old vb code and see if I could extract the new uifile resource on my own, with no 3rd party resource editors. I was able to extract the raw data and save it to a file. When I opened it up in notepad, it looked just like all the other binary files you open up in notepad.

After some Googling, I found that many app devs convert their xml files to binary for quicker access.

I guess its now about finding the right conversion code to convert the file back to xml, and then resave it again as binary :shock:.

Im sure all this makes no sense to most, but I hope that someone with more know-how sees this and can post some suggestions.

Its only a matter of time before MS converts all the UIFiles to binary.

Anyways, it may be 6 more months before I post again. LOL
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    8
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