Windows XP Starter Edition Modding

[Lucas Brooks]

Hi, I am working on a Windows XP Starter Edition mod and whenever you modify ediskeer.dll, it will give you the unsupported state error and shuts down. Is there anything I can do to modify ediskeer.dll without the error? What I wanted to do is change the image on the start menu and the watermark (not removing them).

Any advice on how to?

Regards,
ComputerHunter

[alpha.burton]

Hi, I am working on a Windows XP Starter Edition mod and whenever you modify ediskeer.dll, it will give you the unsupported state error and shuts down. Is there anything I can do to modify ediskeer.dll without the error? What I wanted to do is change the image on the start menu and the watermark (not removing them).

Any advice on how to?

Regards,
ComputerHunter

i'd like to add the starter edition image to the start menu and to the the desktop corner on a normal home xp version.i wonder if its possible to edit the "ediskeer.dll" to do that? seems that would make more sense. any help on this?

[Lucas Brooks]

Home edition don't even have ediskeer.dll. Here all the changes Starter Edition Optional Component does on the Home Edition.
https://pastebin.com/k144jmjM
You can have a look at the theme part and not sure if you can port the Starter Edition theme to Home Edition.

Still looking for a solution to edit ediskeer.dll... Pretty sure the system checks for the signature in that file.

[Wheatley]

Still looking for a solution to edit ediskeer.dll... Pretty sure the system checks for the signature in that file.

You're right, winlogon checks the integrity of ediskeer.dll. AFAIK nobody has figured out (or published) any methods for patching ediskeer.dll on disk. The only work on XP Starter that I'm aware of is patching out some of the restrictions with a debugger, which of course isn't what you're trying to do.

[Lucas Brooks]

No, that is not what I wanted... I tries to replace Winlogon from Home Edition SP2 and the Unsupported State (2) error still comes up...

[Wheatley]

No, that is not what I wanted... I tries to replace Winlogon from Home Edition SP2 and the Unsupported State (2) error still comes up...

Microsoft isn't that dumb. Like I said, ediskeer.dll editing hasn't been figured out yet.

Here are some previous posts regarding Starter's protection schemes and how the restrictions are actually done:
https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewt ... 78#p367778
https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewt ... 51#p358451

[Lucas Brooks]

I am pretty sure Bobby knows how to remove the restrictions and I might ask him. He said on the other thread that you would end up with Home Edition...

Where is the function that checks for the signature or hash of ediskeer.dll? It might be possible to remove or zero out that bit. Never done reverse engineering on this kind of stuff before.

BTW, I've read all those threads before... Patching those doesn't help, it only helps with removing some restrictions. I want to keep the restrictions but edit ediskeer.dll to replace the two BMP files in it.

[Wheatley]

He said on the other thread that you would end up with Home Edition...

That's right.

Where is the function that checks for the signature or hash of ediskeer.dll? It might be possible to remove or zero out that bit. Never done reverse engineering on this kind of stuff before.

Winlogon does the unsupported state messages, but that's where my knowledge ends. It's actually trivial to get rid of the unsupported state (2) message by patching winlogon (proof), but that's one visible part of the integrity checking, the rest are very much intact.

[Lucas Brooks]

What if we replace all the system files from Home Edition SP2 and remove all registry entries created by StartOC?

[Bobby]

I am pretty sure Bobby knows how to remove the restrictions and I might ask him. He said on the other thread that you would end up with Home Edition...

Yeah, I just spent some time to convert a copy of XP Starter Edition SP2 to Home Edition...

As you can see, I had more than 3 apps opened at the same time. You won't have the start menu banner and the watermark so I don't think this is very meaningful to you. Also, the text size and everything was completely messed up... It looks more like a Home Edition than Starter Edition.

What if we replace all the system files from Home Edition SP2 and remove all registry entries created by StartOC?

That is partially what I did. Not going to help you change the banner.

You can try to replace

Code: Select all

0F 84 86 00 00 00

with

Code: Select all

90 90 90 90 90 90

at offset 000306A0 of winlogon.exe. It is not the solution to your problem but will give you some time before it restart and error 2 won't pop up. Also, you should know XPSP2RES.DLL is where the error message is stored and that doesn't mean much.

Bobby