Windows 8 build 7777

Windows 8 build 7777 is a build of Windows 8, which was shared to the BetaWiki Discord server on 27 June 2022.

New features and changes
Not many changes have occurred since build 7746, and it is overall mostly similar to its predecessor. This build replaces the Harmony wallpaper with a blue-green gradient that advises Microsoft employees to not leak the build, followed by an additional warning about the legal consequences of sharing the builds outside of Microsoft; these same warnings would also be implemented into the Version Reporter Applet. It is also the first build to introduce the  libraries, which would later be used to house most features included within the final version of Windows 8—at this point in development, however, the Redpill feature locking mechanism was not implemented, and the libraries themselves are merely non-functional stubs. Internet Explorer 9 has also been updated and now features proper branding along with a preliminary version of the final logo.

The end-user license agreement has also been updated and now no longer refers to the operating system as release candidate build of Windows 7.

Windows Store
This build has an extremely early implementation of the Windows Store, dependent on Microsoft intranet servers. It does not work by default as it queries a Microsoft intranet server (\\ericflo3\winstore) for a file by the name of "users.ini" to determine if someone's local user account is permitted to use the Windows Store. As this only existed inside Microsoft for a brief spell in 2010, and nowhere else, it will fail to find the server and exit before displaying anything. However, it is possible to patch this and see an offline screen.

Inside the function that evaluates the user's eligibility to use the Store is a call to the Windows API function GetPrivateProfileIntW. (W = unicode version, as opposed to A = ansi). This function takes a section name, value name, default value and file name and returns an integer value loaded from an INI (the reason it is called profile is a remnant from Windows 1.0 DR5 and earlier, when "user.pro" was the filename for WIN.INI). If it cannot find the file the default value is returned.

By changing the default value (stored as an immediate in the function call code) from 0 to 1, the function will fail and then return 1 instead of 0. By doing this, the Store is fooled into believing that you are permitted to use it and it will then proceed to start. It will then immediately try and contact an intranet server and then fail because it does not exist, displaying a "could not connect" message.

This patch also works for build 7779, and can be obtained by changing 0x9D9 from 0x01 to 0x00.

users.ini format

 * Replace user1/user2 with the local user account name of your installation

[users] user1=1 ; permitted to use windows store user2=0 ; not permitted to use windows store (any value that is not 1 fails)

Hyper-V
This build is the first build to support Hyper-V being added as an optional feature in client SKUs. Interestingly, if the Hyper-V boot fails, messages asking the user to enable virtual machine extensions will be printed directly onto the boot screen instead of being spewed as an Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) log. A similar occurrence can also be visibly observed in build 8128.

XHCI
Native support for USB 3/XHCI controllers has been added to this build, although it does not function properly and will prevent the build from booting unless the controller is removed from the system.

"Change your look" option in Control Panel
While this build does not have a usertile, the link to the "Change your look" option used to configure it in later builds is already present in this build.

Removed features

 * The Send Feedback feature has been removed in this build.