Explorer Patcher uninstalled, windows update to 24H2/25H2 still blocked.

[Red-Steam-Mods]

Before reporting your issue

• I have confirmed that this issue does not happen when ExplorerPatcher is not installed
• I do not have "register as shell extension" enabled
• I have tried my best to check existing issues

Repro ExplorerPatcher versions

N/A

Repro Windows Versions

Windows 11 23H2 22631.6199 x64

3rd party tweak software installed

none besides explorer patcher

Describe the bug

I'm currently running Windows 23H2. I'm attempting to install Windows 24H2. The first time, the update stalled at 14% and this window told me that explorer patcher needs to be uninstalled. (This is consistent with advice I found elsewhere online).

The trouble is, I did uninstall Explorer Patcher (after seeing this the first time). It is now not installed on my pc, and I'm not sure why I'm still getting this error. I have restarted and signed-out and back in to both local user accounts on my machine.

Expected outcome

Once explorer patcher was uninstalled, I would expect the update update to install without issue.

Actual outcome

Even after uninstalling explorer patcher, explorer patcher is flagged as the reason windows cannot proceed with the update to 24H2.

Additional info

No response

Crash Dumps

No response

Media

[pyrates999]

Install the latest release of EP: https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher/releases

Then uninstall EP. I think you may have had an older release of EP installed.

[Red-Steam-Mods]

Just tried this. Unfortunately, update is still blocked.

Incomplete Uninstall?

I've tried updating through Windows 11 Settings > Apps > Installed Apps menu, and via the Uninstall tab on EP's properties window. I've restarted my computer between all of the steps, just to make sure any changes are propagating properly. Would restarting too quickly after uninstalling EP have ended some background cleanup tasks that are necessary to complete for the windows update to proceed?

Shell Extension Problem?

I think at one point I did register explorer patcher as a shell extension while testing out some of its features. So here are some questions related to that:

1. would having EP registered as a shell extension cause any issues with windows update?
2. does uninstalling EP automaticallly de-register the shell extension?
3. If not, is there a way to undo this manually?

Other Ideas...

• Is this a problem with my two user accounts? I have two local administrator accounts on this PC (and no account signed in with a MS account). Could it be an issue with administrative rights?
• This PC was in-place upgraded from Windows 10. Although explorer patcher was not installed until after the upgrade to Windows 11. Does that complicate things?

[pyrates999]

Ok, try installing EP again. Disable register as shell extension. In EP properties application, click on file explorer, untick register as shell extension and click restart file explorer in the bottom left corner.

Then uninstall EP, reboot, and attempt the feature upgrade of windows 11.

And check if the file dxgi.dll in C:\Windows exists. If it does, rename it to dxgi.dll.old. Then reboot windows. Set file manager to display extensions and show operating system files if you don't see it.

Once the feature upgrade finishes, delete dxgi.dll.old in C:\Windows.

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If that doesn't work, here's the manual way of uninstalling EP, follow the steps here: #3955 (comment)

[Red-Steam-Mods]

Just tried all of the following steps (still with EP uninstalled. Should I have reinstalled it?). There was no ExplorerPatcher folder in C:\ProgramFiles (or C:\ProgramFiles (x86)).

I did find a %APPDATA%\ExplorerPatcher folder in both user accounts. There was a cleanup sub-folder for on one of the user accounts, and in the other user's folder were 3 .pdb files. I deleted the Cleanup sub-folder off the personal user account (But initially left the %APPDATA%\ExplorerPatcher folder), And just moved the entire %APPDATA%\ExplorerPatcher folder to the desktop on the Work user account. Tried restarting everything. That didn't work.

Then I deleted the (now empty) %APPDATA%\ExplorerPatcher from the personal user account. No dice. Update is still blocked. Next suggestions?

[pyrates999]

did you check for the file dxgi.dll in C:\Window?

[Red-Steam-Mods]

I did, and found it, and renamed it to dxgi.dll.old. I then went and followed the advice of your earlier linked thread, and tried to root out any user-account level folders where other dxgi.dll s might be. I even went so far as to remove the registry entries. But the update is still blocked. Next idea?

[pyrates999]

At this point, I would reinstall the latest EP version from here: https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher/releases

Then uninstall EP.