Silverwolf's Auditorium

When testing windows 7 I noticed that after applying a patch to remove the desktop watermark any program that was configured to use "Compatibility Mode" would crash instantly when I tried to launch it.

I did a google search and it seems the problem is caused by incorrect permissions on the user32.dll file after applying the patch.

I found the following instructions on the web, tried them and it worked !  All credit goes to the original poster "maxwin".  You can see the original post here.

Here are the instructions (With my comments):

I think I have found the solution.

The crash is due to the wrong permission settings of the file "user32.dll" under "c:\windows\system32\" after the patch is applied.

You can still apply the patch to remove the watermark. Then you need to correct the permission of the file.

Go to "user32.dll", right click and select "Properties", under "Security" tab, correct the following permission settings.
(In order to complete this step I first had to click on advanced, and remove the checkbox titled "Include inheritable permissions from this object's parent".  Click "Add" in the dialog box that appears.  Then you can click ok and proceed through this list.)

System - only "read and execute" and "read"

Administrators - only "read and execute" and "read"

Users - only "read and execute" and "read"

TrustedInstaller - "Full Control"

File Owner - TrustedInstaller
(I had to add trusted installer to the list as detailed below.)

Reminders: to add "TrustedInstaller", you need to type "NT Service\TrustedInstaller" without the quote.

Hope this information can solve the problem