Windhawk and symbol download errors
About 45 hours ago (around May 2, 13:00 UTC) Windhawk users started reporting that some of the mods stopped working. Below is a summary of what is affected and what can be done, followed by more details.
Last updated: 18 May
Summary
What is affected?
The problem only affects the mods below, the rest of the mods are unaffected.
The following mods only work on selected Windows versions (latest Windows 10 and Windows 11 versions are supported, preview builds aren’t supported):
- Taskbar height and icon size
- Disable grouping on the taskbar
- Taskbar Labels for Windows 11
- Taskbar Clock Customization
- Taskbar Thumbnail Reorder
- Middle click to close on the taskbar
- Windows 11 Taskbar Styler (only some styles)
- Taskbar notification icon spacing
- Virtual Desktop Preserve Taskbar Order
- Cycle taskbar buttons with mouse wheel
- Taskbar minimize/restore on scroll
- Open pinned items with double click
The following mods don’t work:
- Taskbar Volume Control (only middle click option)
- Eradicate Immersive Menus
- Aero Tray
- Win32 Tray Clock Experience
- Windows 7 Clock Spacing
- Better Taskbar Autohide
- Classic Taskbar 3D buttons Lite
- No Taskbar Item Glow
- Classic Taskbar 3D buttons with extended compatibility
What can be done?
Currently, the only thing that can be done is to wait for Microsoft to fix the problem.
When will the problem be fixed?
According to Microsoft, the problem will hopefully be resolved in a week.
Update (18 May): Now, more than two weeks later, the problem still wasn’t fixed. At this point, we have no additional information.
More details
Some Windhawk mods rely on Microsoft debug symbols to be able to locate the functions to customize. The debug symbols are provided by Microsoft, and can be downloaded from the Microsoft public symbol server. For some reason, debug symbols for the following files became unavailable: explorer.exe, taskbar.dll and taskbar.view.dll.
Having these debug symbol files makes mod development and maintenance easier, and helps creating mods which are more resilient to updates. Debug symbols aren’t strictly necessary for Windhawk or its mods, but they help.
One of the users contacted Microsoft regarding the unavailability of the debug symbol files. They responded with the following:
This is intentional. We are doing some maintenance on the symbol server which requires blocking certain symbols. Hopefully this will be resolved in a week.
It’s a mystery to me what kind of maintenance would affect these files specifically. The rest of the symbol files seem to be available. Let’s just hope that it will indeed be resolved in a week, and that we’ll go back to normal.
Update (4 May): Some of the popular mods were updated with a workaround to the missing symbol files problem. For details, check the mod’s changelog.
This odd issue concerns me a bit because I know some of the insider builds of 11 are starting to block other non-Windhawk modding apps (though workarounds are apparently not very difficult). It almost feels intentional like they are testing the waters for more aggressive third party mod blocking.
Or it could just be a coincidence because the symbols servers obviously has many use cases outside Windhawk and blocking Windhawk functionality would be easier done a different way than this. But just saying that Microsoft is making some really strange choices lately.
they are cleaning up, removing remnants of win10 or at least initially blocking ability to access them, that’s reasonable and expected, though it would be nice if they fixed the 11 shell before that
Same problem again with Win11 June 2024 Patchday. Build 32H2 22631.3593. No symbols are loaded.
Should be fine now for mods with the workaround, please disable and re-enable the mods, or just restart Windhawk. Let me know if that works.
It perfectly works 🙂
Thanks very much!
Konrad
Taskbar height and icon size and Taskbar notification icon spacing doesn’t work!?
Please post a debug log
You can do so by following the instructions on the Troubleshooting page:
https://github.com/ramensoftware/windhawk/wiki/Troubleshooting#some-or-all-windhawk-mods-dont-work
Is there any chance to get the “Taskbar height and icon size” mod working with Windows Beta builds again?
Can I somehow get my hands on the required symbols manually?
Thanks in advance!