Where Customization Begins 

  • Windows 7 explorer.exe for Windows 8 (Ex7forW8)

 #23858  by Neuropass
 11 Oct 2012, 14:04
Long story short, i made a wrapper to Windows 7 explorer.exe to run on Windows 8. You can try it now in order to have native Windows 7 desktop experience, without immersive shell bits enabled, saving RAM. New Windows Explorer features like ribbon and file copying are present.


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You need to have Windows 8 RP or RTM (32-bit or 64-bit) installed. Works with Server 2012 too.

Download:
Code: Select allhttp://tihiy.net/files/ex7forW8_1.0.zip



Original Author and topic: Windows 8 Anti-Nausea Pill.


INSTALLATION
============
Launch Ex7ForW8_setup.exe. Follow instructions. You'll need Windows 7 installation DVD or files ready; keep in mind that they should be same language and bitness.

UNINSTALLATION
==============
Uninstall program from Programs and Features. If you're using portable install, just switch shell to Windows 8 and delete folder

PRECAUTIONS
===========
This program does not modify system files and system protected registry entries.
You can switch back to unaltered Windows 8 UI any time.
Windows 7 shell is enabled only to users which switched to it.
Other users can use Windows 8 shell without any problems.


PLEASE READ
THIS PROGRAM IS PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS" AND I'M NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING

LIMITATIONS:
- Metro programs won't run. Metro UI screens won't show as it's not loaded, cannot and won't be.
- You may get more UAC prompts since explorer.exe is not in win8 UAC-approved whitelist.
- You can't add new user. Run netplwiz.exe for that.
- No default language input indicator. Enable language bar via Control Panel->Language->Advanced Settings->Use desktop language bar.
- No multi-monitor taskbars. Maybe more multimon issues.

Several UI bits missing:
- "You have new program to handle this stuff" toasts won't show. You need to use Default programs to change associations.


All programs shown in explorer7 has the same shortcuts that explorer8 shows on Start Screen. So the changes you do reflect here and there; better backup desktop.lnk from start menu.

Explorer Ribbon is still there, it's not explorer.exe related!
Using explorer.exe from Windows 8 DP won't give solve many problems, it's shell32 which was cut of start menu features.
 #23863  by Rammstein874
 11 Oct 2012, 15:11
Great! Will need to test this when i play around with with 8