Windows On Windows

Exactly what the title says, talk about the recent Windows 11 build here, along with discoveries you may have found inside it.

(Edit: Changed the thread to only be about 21996 to make the thread not overlap with other potential threads.)

I'm sure whoever made this leak will be in serious trouble if they get found out, remember those Windows 8 beta wallpapers?

In all seriousness, it's, interesting? I haven't installed the build yet, so i can't comment on performance, but I'm glad they're finally adding more fluent design UX elements, but it still is obviously incomplete.
Apparently the start menu and taskbar is representative of what will ship, which i have mixed feelings on.

I'm not really sure what to think.

This is the first thread I'm checking every day for new discoveries.

My discoveries so far:

• The new taskbar does not allow you to unlock, move, resize, decombine icons, or enable labels anymore, but the Windows 10 21H1 explorer can be used to get around that for now.

• Forcing the new taskbar to one of the sides puts Explorer in a crash loop.

• The old start menu seems to still exist behind a registry key and works exactly how it does under 10.

• The System control panel seems to be completely gutted from the OS.

• Aerolite still exists and has the rounded corners.

• Windows Basic still works, along with Classic using the same methods as Windows 10 and 8.x. The taskbar seems to break more than 10 if DWM is disabled though. (or Explorer entirely if your name is MS17)

• The NT kernel version is still 10.0, despite being Windows 11.

• The Triple Decker Clock is only under 96dpi and goes back to a double decker clock if you use a higher DPI.

• The setup and recovery options seem to be unchanged from Windows 8.1 other than a few strings and branding bitmaps being changed. Recovery still says it's Windows 10.

• Notepad and MS Paint were moved and have a new about box. The old notepad.exe is a stub, and mspaint.exe is gone entirely from system32.

• Most of the legacy programs like WMP12 and WordPad are missing from the start menu's all apps and were moved to Administrative Tools, which is called Windows Tools now. They still pop up when you search.

• The native Basic theme without modification can STILL be accessed under MSC windows, and uses the Server Core VS if you use Aerolite with it.

• For some odd reason, a service can be disabled that stops you from being able to type in the start menu, search box, and Windows Terminal. No clue why.

• I know it's possible to get IE11 working again just like the recent Insider builds, but I never figured out how to get it working. Help would be appreciated here.

I should note that the obvious stuff like Task Manager being absent from the taskbar context menu I'm not going to add.

SkyeWeeb wrote: ↑Wed Jun 16, 2021 3:57 am

• The new taskbar does not allow you to unlock, move, resize, decombine icons, or enable labels anymore, but the Windows 10 21H1 explorer can be used to get around that for now.

The small taskbar can still be used with the Windows 11 explorer, along with a new large taskbar. According to Albacore on Twitter, this can be done by navigating to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced in regedit and modifying TaskbarSi. If it's not there, create it.

It can be modified by changing the value to one of the following:
0 = Small taskbar
1 = Norma/default taskbar
2 = Large taskbar (new)

The small taskbar will not look quite right due to the icons being scaled down from 32x32 to 16x16 instead of using their native 16x16 icons. This can be fixed with another DWORD in the same path called TaskbarSmallIcons. By changing the value from 0 to 1, you will enable the small icons in the taskbar you have seen since Windows 95. Interestingly, this also works with the other sizes, despite not looking right.

Here is some results you can get by modifying these:


And no, taskbar labels are not able to be used. If you want to recreate the older Windows taskbar, Windows 10 and earlier is still required.

Windows 10 21H1's explorer runs under Windows 11 and works 90% how it should. Here is some things I found using it:

• Win+X and Cortana are completely broken and do not open at all.

• You can still unlock the taskbar, resize it, and place it wherever you like. When you restart into 11's Explorer, you will end up in a crashloop if the taskbar is placed on the left or right, but if the taskbar is on top, it works, but with some jank animations with the Start Menu and such.

• Resizing the Windows 10 taskbar does not affect the Windows 11 taskbar.

• The Start Menu folder used in Windows Vista-10 is relocated for built in Windows apps in both Windows 10 and 11's explorers.

• None of the taskbar options in Settings work in Windows 10's Explorer other than autohiding and turning system tray icons on or off.

• You also cannot set the taskbar buttons to "Never combine" as Settings does not change the options for the taskbar, unlike the Start Menu settings, which use Windows 10's Settings, ads and all.

• Small icons can be used if you set ONLY TaskbarSmallIcons to 1. TaskbarSi does not affect 10's explorer.

• Task View and Search use their Windows 11 counterparts when using 10's Explorer.

• The Windows 10 taskbar context menu works just like it does in native Windows 10, including Toolbars. The context menu itself is not changed.

• Tiling windows side-by-side and stacked via the taskbar context menu is bugged here and only displays the windows on the left side of the screen as seen below.

Any window that sets DwmExtendFrameIntoClientArea to -1 will break under Windows 11. In simpler terms, any window that uses Aero glass on the entire window.

There's a few examples of this, the Gadget picker, CustomizerGod, and Windows Mobility Center. Under Windows 7, they all use Aero glass transparency through the entire window. Under Windows 8.x and 10, they either had that bug where half of the window got discolored, or worked fine. Under Windows 11 however, this happens.



The left window is the Gadget picker from Winaero, which is also the active window. Disabling titlebar colors makes it the exact same as the right window, which is CustomizerGod. Interestingly, the windows can still be interacted with, but they are completely invisible. You can still place gadgets for example. Another thing that is interesting is that if you maximize CustomizerGod, it works perfectly fine. Same for the Gadget picker, aside from the blur being gone for some reason.




You can also snap CustomizerGod using the Win+Left/Right keyboard shortcut. This does not fix the window strangely. It also is not the same line that regular floating windows are. Look for yourself.



If anyone knows why exactly any of this stuff happens, please tell me. I'd love to know.

A small update to earlier's post. I have attempted to load the three programs I mentioned last time under Basic and Classic. (Mobility Center acts the exact same as the Gadget picker if you're wondering) MajorSky17 showed off the Gadget picker under Windows Classic in his latest livestream, and it looked quite interesting. (6/18/2021 as of today) Let's take a look at the results.




Basic seems to render the window contents, unlike the regular Aero theme. The background, or where the Aero glass would've been under VIsta/7, is completely transparent under Mobility Center and the Gadget picker. Interestingly, the Gadget picker loses its window border when its focus is lost. However, CustomizerGod retains its blur for some odd reason, and also requires Exclude all windows with extended client area to be unchecked. The caption buttons also seem to not work at all.




Classic's results are very similar to Basic's. The only difference inside the windows themselves is the question mark icon losing its transparency in the Mobility Center. Other than that, the titlebar is transparent and glows due to it running on a window with DwmExtendFrameIntoClientArea set to -1. Windows Photo Viewer does the same thing. I should also mention Windows Photo Viewer loses its bottom half with the buttons if you run without Basic or Classic.

This didn't exactly solve the mystery of 11's broken theme, but this is definitely still interesting regardless.