Windows 10 – How to Get Old Sticky Notes Back After December 2018 Update

sticky-noteswindows 10windows-10-v1809

I used for years this solution: https://superuser.com/a/1173332/458487 linking to https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/get-classic-sticky-notes-windows-10-anniversary/

After December 2018 "Feature update to Windows 10, version 1809", it no longer works, tested on both Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Professional (Home OS build 17763.194).

I copied the old stikynot exe and mui files into the System32 folder (including the MUI file to the en-US folder) as usual after bigger update, but it won't run. The task is starting for a second or two, either displaying name Sticky Notes when MUI file is present, or no name at all f I delete it, there's no icon and it silently ends without ever showing anything. Any ideas how to fix it?

I tried downloading SNTSearch.dll, doesn't help.

Thank you very much! I don't want to use the obnoxious Metro-styled new Sticky Notes – either I repair this, or will find an alternative. But I grew used to the look and ease of use.

EDIT: On other machine I haven't purged the Windows.old folder yet, and when I run it from System32 there, it starts. So we're probably missing some other DLL. Any idea how to find out which? Are there any logs anywhere? I'm not that familiar with debugging under Windows unfortunately.

Best Answer

To run old Sticky Note in Windows 10 Version 1809 aka. October 2018 Update, StikyNot.exe needs a compatible DUI70.DLL file (Windows DirectUI Engine). A fair bit of warning, there are many websites which provide DLL files (Dynamic Link Library) for free. DO NOT download them because they may contain harmful malwares.

There are many ways to download old Windows 10 ISO files. Here I have choose a tool from HeiDoc.net which uses official Microsoft link to download ISO files. For this procedure, I have used two Windows 10 versions --

Extract those files from their ISO files respectively. Here are the list of what we need:

Win10_1511_English_x64.iso
|
+-- sources
    |
    +-- install.wim
        |
        +-- Windows\System32\StikyNot.exe
        +-- Windows\System32\en-US\StikyNot.exe.mui

Win10_1803_English_x64.iso
|
+-- sources
    |
    +-- install.wim
        |
        +-- Windows\System32\DUI70.dll
        +-- Windows\System32\en-US\DUI70.dll.mui

The en-US folder may change according to the main locale of that ISO file, for example, en-GB for UK English, zh-CN for simplified Chinese etc. Copy those above four files in any folder like this:

MyFolder
|
+-- StikyNot.exe
+-- DUI70.dll
|
+-- en-US
    |
    +-- StikyNot.exe.mui
    +-- DUI70.dll.mui

Alternatively, both files can be copied from Windows 7 ISO file. So how did I find the dependency of DUI70.dll? Answer, with Dependencies tool (open-source and free) and some trial 'n error. Open the StikyNot.exe in that tool. It will show many functions are imported from DUI70.dll library. The other imported functions are from System32 libraries.

Related Question