Explorer Freezes after installing Rectify11

[wealstarr]

Description

Hello,

I installed the latest version of Rectify11 on fresh install, after a restart, explorer freezes without showing anything with loading cursor spinning indefinitely. Same thing happens with Control Panel. Don't know what other consoles are effected.

Steps To Reproduce

1. Install Windows
2. Install drivers
3. Install Rectify11
4. Restart
5. Open Explorer

Rectify11 Version

Version 3.2.70.2

Windows Version

Windows 11 23H2

Logs

I apologize, I don't know where I can find the logs or how to browse for them as explorer isn't working. Windows 11 is unusable without Rectify11. Please if somebody could help me sort this out.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[Endeade]

I can vouch for this, I've experienced this issue as well on Windows 11 23H2 and 24H2. Explorer tends to work after the theme is changed back to the default one. A possible bug in the .msstyles?

[wealstarr]

I can vouch for this, I've experienced this issue as well on Windows 11 23H2 and 24H2. Explorer tends to work after the theme is changed back to the default one. A possible bug in the .msstyles?

If I had to make a wild guess, I would wager that the custom shellstyle.dll used by Rectify11 searches for a specific property in the msstyle file and in the absence of that property, it just keeps searching it and fails to render the shell.

The problem would go away if the default Win 11 shell arguments are used but then it wouldn't have all the customizations and Rectifications did by Rectify11.

Though to be able to find what specific property msstyle is missing would be like searching for a needle in a haystack. Only those who developed the shellstyle can answer this question.

Apart from that I'm quite depressed that nobody from the team cared to respond. Their messages on the installer makes them appear like really cool guys but I guess that is just virtue signaling. We'll have to wait and see.

[WinExperiments]

@wealstarr Hi, Rectify11 shellstyle developer here. I apologize for not responding earlier, I'm quite busy these days.

Why is that issue happening? Microsoft has removed several system DLL files from Windows 11 in 24H2, which does affect the shellstyle as it has too many dependencies to add the custom icons on the old Windows 7 bar (Organize, Open, Give access to, etc) which appears on Open/Save dialogs. I'll have to remove all DLLs that existed in older Windows versions and then release a working shellstyle. The issue could also be if duires.dll (a custom file from Rectify11) is missing from System32.

For now, you can press Win+R then Browse, then delete C:\Windows\Resources\Themes\Rectified\Shell\shellstyle.dll and then restart Windows Explorer.

[wealstarr]

@wealstarr Hi, Rectify11 shellstyle developer here. I apologize for not responding earlier, I'm quite busy these days.

Why is that issue happening? Microsoft has removed several system DLL files from Windows 11 in 24H2, which does affect the shellstyle as it has too many dependencies to add the custom icons on the old Windows 7 bar (Organize, Open, Give access to, etc) which appears on Open/Save dialogs. I'll have to remove all DLLs that existed in older Windows versions and then release a working shellstyle. The issue could also be if duires.dll (a custom file from Rectify11) is missing from System32.

For now, you can press Win+R then Browse, then delete C:\Windows\Resources\Themes\Rectified\Shell\shellstyle.dll and then restart Windows Explorer.

Thank you for the response. There exist a similar thread complaining about the same issue where you assured that issues has been fixed but as evident here it certainly isn't. Your project concerns the critical system files which must be patched /replaced with precision, any hiccups would lead to a system crash or bricked.

Please, if you could make sure that your packages are gone through rigorous testing phase, it would be most helpful. Consider this a humble request.

Kind regards