Comment by withinrafael
3 years ago
Similar story: Friend and I put out a kernel driver (uxstyle.sys) that would patch Microsoft's theming digital signature checks. It was free, buggy, and bugchecked the OS on upgrade. It was unsurprisingly added to compatibility blocks in Windows. I fixed the bug and asked Microsoft to loosen the block (version X and below). Microsoft refused citing a EULA violation. Valid or not, I renamed the driver to elytsxu.sys to circumvent their check and the app worked well enough until third-party theming fell out of favor.
On the rare occasion I install a Windows XP VM nowadays, I still patch uxstyle.dll and install my favorite style: DeMx[0].
[0]: https://www.deviantart.com/xandaman/art/DeMx-29075379