WD11 — Watermark Disabler 11

Remove the "Evaluation copy / Insider Preview" desktop watermark on Windows 11.

A rebuild of Universal Watermark Disabler (UWD), reworked for current Windows 11 builds (24H2 / 25H2 / 26xxx, including Insider and beta builds) where the original silently stopped working.

---

Download

Grab wd11.exe from the latest release. It's a single self-contained file — no installer, no runtime to download, no dependencies. Just run it.

Requirements: Windows 10 1809+ or Windows 11, 64-bit. Administrator rights are needed to install/uninstall (it changes a system registry key).

"Windows protected your PC" — that's expected

WD11 isn't code-signed (a certificate costs money), and it uses a legitimate but AV-sensitive technique, so SmartScreen will show a blue warning the first time you run it:

1. Click More info
2. Click Run anyway

Some antivirus engines may also flag it heuristically because of how it works (a COM proxy injected into Explorer) — this is the same mechanism the original UWD uses. The full source is in this repo if you want to review or build it yourself.

---

Usage

1. Run wd11.exe.
2. It shows your Windows edition/build and whether WD11 is currently installed.
3. Click Install → approve the UAC prompt → Explorer restarts → the watermark is gone.
4. To revert, run it again and click Uninstall.

The change survives reboots and Windows updates — it registers a proxy rather than editing any Windows file, so cumulative updates don't wipe it.

---

How it works

The desktop watermark text is drawn by Explorer. WD11:

1. Delivery — COM proxy. It points the CLSID_ExplorerHostCreator in-proc server at its own DLL, which forwards the real interface to ExplorerFrame.dll — so Explorer loads WD11's DLL and keeps working normally. No Windows binary is modified.
2. Suppression — API hooks. Inside Explorer it patches the import tables (by resolved function address, across every descriptor including delay-load) for LoadStringW, ExtTextOutW, TextOutW, DrawTextW and DrawTextExW, and drops the watermark strings before they're drawn.
3. Language-independent. The watermark strings are read from the live localized resources at runtime, so it works on any UI language and survives resource-ID changes between builds.

Why the original UWD stopped working

UWD hooks LoadStringW by matching the import that comes from user32.dll. On modern builds that import arrives through an API-set stub (api-ms-win-core-libraryloader-*.dll), so UWD's name match finds nothing and silently does nothing. WD11 matches by function address instead, which is immune to that redirection. Full write-up in docs/FINDINGS.md.

---

Build from source

Prerequisites: Visual Studio 2022 (Community is fine) with:

• Desktop development with C++ (MSVC x64 toolset + Windows 11 SDK)
• .NET desktop development workload
• Windows App SDK C# Templates component

Then, from the repo root:

build_app.cmd

This builds, in order:

1. wd11.dll — the injected proxy/hook DLL (src/)
2. wd11ctl.exe — the native installer/controller, with wd11.dll embedded (installer/)
3. wd11.exe — the WinUI 3 GUI, with wd11ctl.exe embedded, published as one self-contained file → dist\wd11.exe

To build just the native pieces (no GUI), run build_installer.cmd.

Project layout

Path	What
src/	The proxy/hook DLL (C++) — IAT patching, text-draw hooks, string harvesting
installer/	wd11ctl.exe (C++) — takes ownership of the CLSID key, installs/uninstalls, self-elevates. own_test.cpp proves the take-ownership primitive.
app/	The WinUI 3 GUI (C#)
docs/FINDINGS.md	The reverse-engineering write-up

---

Credits

• Based on the technique and original work of PainteR — Universal Watermark Disabler.
• WD11 is an independent reimplementation for modern Windows 11 builds by WRSTT, standing on the shoulders of PainteR's work.

License

MIT. Provided as-is, with no warranty. It modifies system state on Windows Insider/evaluation installs — use at your own risk.