Useful development tools/scripts/helpers

[valinet]

This is a list of useful tools I recommend which I use a lot during development especially, but not only:

Batch file for quickly restarting File Explorer

Here is the batch file I use for development, in order to quickly restart File Explorer. Make sure you use the absolute latest version of EP (31.4) for it to work:

@echo off
del C:\Windows\dxgia.dll
ren C:\Windows\dxgi.dll dxgia.dll
xcopy "C:\Users\root\Downloads\ExplorerPatcher.amd64.dll" C:\Windows
ren C:\Windows\ExplorerPatcher.amd64.dll dxgi.dll
rundll32 "C:\Windows\dxgi.dll",ZZRestartExplorer

Replace C:\Users\root\Downloads\ExplorerPatcher.amd64.dll with the path to your dxgi.dll/ExplorerPatcher.amd64.dll.

Avoid killing Explorer with taskkill /f /im explorer.exe, for example, as that shuts it down without it having a chance to save the settings. Instead, use the new exported function of ExplorerPatcher, ZZRestartExplorer, which restarts it gracefully using Windows' Restart Manager. This will also reopen any folder windows that you had open, mainly restoring the state before the restart.

A program for dumping addresses of symbols from PDB files

Often times, you may need to dump the addresses of functions from PDB files quickly (maybe inputting them manually in the registry so EP startsup etc). For that, I recommend pdbdump. To compile, simply use cl pdbdump.c, but make sure to edit the file beforehand and enlarge the maximum memory pool size (change line 44 to yield a bigger number) so that it can analyze large files like twinui.pcshell.pdb. Here is a precompiled version:

pdbdump.zip

Also, beware that the addresses shown are relative to a base address of 0x400000. EP expects just offsets, without any base added to that, so from what you get, substract 0x400000 and that's what you should input in the registry.

Basic usage:
pdbdump twinui.pcshell.pdb | findstr "WndProc" displays the addresses of all symbols containing WndProc in their name

A program for manually downloading symbol files

The must-have recommendation here is `PDB Downloader. Here is a precompiled version:

PDBDownloader.exe

A program for dumping localized strings from system files

This is useful for when needing to find a string that suits some action in the system files, which already have translations for tons of languages. It is very much recommended to first try to find a string in the system files before manually specifying it ourselves in the code, so we do not have to maintain a million translation files.

This is based on the example provided here, I just put the functions in order and provide a ready to compile file here, and also made it so it can output the Unicode strings to the terminal as described here. To compile, simply use cl /DUNICODE DumpStringTable.cpp. Here's a precompiled version:

DumpStringTable.zip

Basic usage:
DumpStringTable C:\Windows\System32\ExplorerFrame.dll dumps all translatable strings from ExplorerFrame.dll in System32.