Windows 8 build 7777

Windows 8 build 7777 is a build of Windows 8, which was shared on 27 June 2022 alongside build 7779. Prior to its leak, its build number was mentioned in the  text document from the original upload of build 7746.

Due to its earliness, many areas still say "Windows 7" and the kernel version is still 6.1 (much like builds that predate 7875).

This is the last build to have the title bar text left-aligned (minus the Windows Classic theme and maximized windows of Aero theme with DWM disabled in build 7779) and wouldn't appear that way again until Windows 10 builds 9910 and 9913.

readme_please_read.txt
An unknown 777x build (7777 probably, it's out there)

New features and changes
This is the first build to introduce the  and   libraries that would later implement parts of the Metro interface, however, both libraries are merely non-functional stubs (specfically, they are stub COM DLLs with basic initialization and shutdown routines) at this point. Likewise, the Redpill feature locking mechanism was not yet implemented into the codebase.

The default Harmony wallpaper was replaced by a blue-green gradient that advises Microsoft employees not to leak the build. There is a difference between this version of the wallpaper and the one from build 7814, which is an asterisk after the word "leak", with the asterisk leading to an additional warning about the legal consequences of sharing the builds outside of Microsoft. The confidential warning was also added to. In this build, the confidential warning is on the wallpaper, whereas in build 7814 a watermark is used instead.

Hyper-V
This is the first available build to add support for running the Hyper-V hypervisor on the Professional and Ultimate 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 silently recorded into the event log. A similar occurrence can also be visibly observed in build 7779 and 8128.

WinRT
This build adds code to  to initialize and shut down the Windows Runtime (WinRT), the predecessor of the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) that is still used for modern apps today. However, the version of WinRT in this build is so early that the only APIs included are string manipulation using the new base COM type, and a notification manager for Windows Push Notification Services (WNS).

Internet Explorer 9
The Internet Explorer 9 web browser has been updated and now features proper branding, along with a preliminary version of the final logo. The new tab page was also redesigned to show popular and suggested sites, with an appearance that is similar to what is observed within the final release.

The build also contains an early version of the new Internet Explorer user interface. It requires patching a function in, ordinals 315/317, to return   in order to activate. This ordinal is merged with several others that also return zero due to compiler optimizations, so ordinal 317's address needs to be pointed towards another ordinal that returns a different value. This will draw new resources with  in the title and use new DirectUI UIFILEs to render an early version of the new UI interface.

Differences include:
 * The buttons on the IE Address Bar are misaligned.
 * The New Tab page uses a slightly earlier design than the version in build 7850.
 * The loading ring is far more translucent.
 * The positioning of the Tools and Favorites menu items are swapped.
 * The Tools and Home icons use slightly earlier design.
 * The Favorites UI is still the IE8 UI.
 * Websites cannot be pinned to the Taskbar directly using the Pin icon (which is different from later builds). They can only be pinned to the IE icon.
 * Tabs are wider.
 * The connection failure webpage is still identical to Internet Explorer 8 and provides the users instructions for that version's UI, regardless of which UI is enabled.

Your Look
While this build does not have a user tile, the link to the "Change your look" option used to configure it in later builds is already present in this build.

Login screen background sync
This build contains a non-functional option to sync the desktop background to the login screen.

Windows Push Notification Services (WNS)
This build is the earliest to contain an early version of Windows Push Notification Services (WNS), which is used to provide toast notifications from the Internet in Windows 8 and later. It cannot be activated due to depending on long-dead Microsoft servers.

Settings Synchronization
This build introduces Windows 8's settings synchronization between devices functionality. There is no UI in the system to expose this functionality, and the system is dependent on the installation of providers that implement a specific COM interface; the system does not install any providers by default.

Windows Store
This build has an extremely early implementation of the Windows Store, dependent on Microsoft intranet-based store servers. It does not work by default as it queries a Microsoft intranet store server for a file by the name of   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, which tries to read a value from an INI file and also takes a default value to be returned if the function fails. By changing the default value (stored as an immediate in the function call code) from 0 to 1, the Store is fooled into believing that the current user account is 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.

Miscellaneous

 * The EULA has been changed to state the product name as "Windows 8" with an EULA ID of "Win8_M1".
 * The Send Feedback feature has been removed.
 * The bundled version of the .NET Framework has been updated from .NET Framework 3.5 in earlier builds to the final version of .NET Framework 4.0.
 * Help and Support has been updated with a new layout. However, navigation might fail as the program is "undergoing major reconstruction".
 * 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.