Windows 10 (32-bit) temporary 'Activate Windows' watermark remover. Reverse engineering PoC code.
Overview
Unactivated Windows 10 displays 'Activate Windows' watermark in a lower right corner of your screen approx. 3 hours after system startup.
This memory loader approach will kill Windows shell (explorer.exe), and then launch modified version with the watermark removed. Watermark stays hidden until you restart system or Windows shell.
Although this is a temporary solution (just a PoC code), it can still be useful if you want to make screenshots, record screen, play fullscreen games etc. with watermark removed.
Usage
Run exploader.exe.
How to build
Install either GCC or MSVC compiler and set PATH environment variable correctly to point to your chosen compiler, then run build.bat script. The script prefers GCC, but if it is not available it will try to build using MSVC.
This loader is intended to be compiled as a 32-bit binary, so make sure you have set your compiler to output 32-bit image.
Tested versions
Windows 10 Pro (32-bit) 20H2
Windows 10 Pro (32-bit) 21H1
Note on antivirus
Your antivirus software may flag this loader as a malware or potentially unwanted program (PUP).
Please ignore this, and add it to your antivirus exclusion list.
Homepage:https://github.com/revengsmK/exploader
Screenshot & demo