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All posts for the month November, 2020

Palette and size patch for MS-PAINT

Posted by OgreVorbis on November 24, 2020
Posted in: Programming. Leave a Comment

Today I was playing around an practicing some skills with x64dbg. x64dbg is a debugger for 64-bit Windows similar to OllyDbg. I used to use OllyDbg a lot back in the day and I even have a lot of old youtube videos I posted on me hacking and patching stuff. It’s really fun to be able to change an EXE without access to the source code.

Anyway, the only main difference between x64dbg and OllyDbg is that one is 64-bit, but otherwise they are pretty similar, although not completely and I am having some problems, but I was able to improve MS-PAINT a fair amount.

This is for Windows 7 paint, but probably works on 10. Ordinary people start reading here. I changed these three things:

  • Paint has a problem where if you paste a really large image, it will save that image size and whenever you open paint, you have to resize the image smaller again, just so you can paste or work with a new image. This patch makes it keep a small image size. Just run the original paint and make sure you set the image size small. Now whenever you run this it will stay that size no matter what.
  • The “do you want to save box” when you quit is removed, so remember to save your file before quitting. I personally don’t like nag message, so I removed it.
  • The palette in the new Paint (newer than XP), uses a bunch of obscure colors that somebody must have decided while they were smoking. I mean, it might be cool for some art work, but all of it is generally going to look the same then. I replaced the palette with the original Paint’s common 16 VGA colors. The classic EGA/VGA color scheme. It’s good if you do work with retro stuff cause it has those colors by default. You can also change the color palette yourself with a hex editor (this part didn’t require any hacking), you just need to search for the RGB hex color codes. Choose an obscure one to start cause it might find other matches. This works right out of the download though, I’m just saying for people who want to change to their own palette.

I may eventually make a patcher program instead so people can make their own palettes for Paint. I’m not sure why Microsoft decided to hard code these oddball color codes in there. Well, it’s Microsoft 😉

Download Patched MSPAINT: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IYfBWzPsPhdlXHgXpKj6VBijccowZnHx/view?usp=sharing

Planet Source Code New CD Reader

Posted by OgreVorbis on November 19, 2020
Posted in: Programming, Software. 8 comments

If you are not aware, planet source code is a website that used to host example Visual Basic source code. The site has recently been taken down due to problems with the server, however the source code archives have been retained.

The problem is that the included reader/indexer for the CD archive is not usable without database drivers that are outdated. I made a new reader program that indexes the CD without the need for any database drivers. This archive is good for people who are learning how to program and want examples for VB6.

The download link contained in this post just contains the reader program and a CSV for the data instead of a database. If you want the whole database I will link that as well.

It works with the archive you can download here. You will find the subfolders called .\Data\Pics and .\Data\Zips empty in this download. You need to place all the zip files from this post in there. They may not be 100% the same. I really hope they are. I downloaded the 7 CDs myself and converted into zip. Whats in the download linked in this post is altered, so hopefully they didn’t put different stuff in there. Please let me know if you have problems. This program can be made to work with other versions of the archive also. So if you have a different mdb file with newer content, send it to me and I can make this working with it.
https://www.vbforums.com/showthread….o-Resource-CDs

There is a search feature (with whole string or each term option), category selection, image viewer, and zip file extractor. In order for the zip function to work, you need to have installed 7-zip. You will need 7-zip to open this download also. Everyone should use it at this point. It’s free and better than WinRAR.

It uses .NET 4.0. I believe that is included in Windows 10, but not 100% sure. I use 7 and XP and confirm it is working on both of those. If it’s not working on 10, tell me and I’ll make a release with a different version of framework.

Download Source: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rtVMN4014T3PkqpIYDkJusPs8h8Idj/view?usp=sharing

(THIS ONE IS NOT FOR VBFORUMS USERS CAUSE THEY CAN’T USE EXEs, but for everyone else who wants an EXE) Download EXE: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fkZKjUO-NmP0qlA9oUK-n_y3DVUKb6iZ/view?usp=sharing