Graphical corruption in high-dpi mode with Aero enabled.

[Jack Tripper]

If i increase my dpi to anything above 96 dpi (and reboot) i will get
graphical corruption after a few minutes. The corruption is limited to
"glass" areas.

For example the start menu may appear as a sheet of pure glass. Buttons on
the taskbar, could appear all mached together. The Alt+Tab panel won't paint
itself. Ossasionally an entire window's client area will be transparent,
rather than painting anything.

If i kill and restart Explorer it fixes itself, for a few minutes. If i
disable Aero (switch to Windows Vista Basic these) it's fine. If i kill the
DWM.exe (which disables Aero) it's fine. If i set it back to 96dpi and
reboot, it's fine.

nVidia GeForce 6600GT.
Any drivers you like, Windows Update's WHQL, nVidia direct, same problem.

It's obviously a problem with the video card itself that Microsoft needs to
work around. (it only happens at non-96dpi mode). MS is doing something that
nVidia doesn't like or support. i have screenshots, if anyone really cares.

i know this is one of those things that i won't be able to get fixed for me,
but is a low priority fix that would take better part of a year to come out.
i seem to be the only person on the internet having the problem (according to
Google). At least now it's documented.

i just hope that somone in the WPF team (e.g.
http://blogs.msdn.com/greg_schechter/) might come across this post, and think
to himself "Anything other than 96dpi? Ohhh wait, you know what it could
be....."

 

[Jack Tripper]

nVidia GeForce 6600GT.

Any drivers you like, Windows Update's WHQL, nVidia direct, same problem.

Got the GeForce 6800GT for Christmas yesterday, same problem.

Graphical corruption if with Aero enabled and i run in high dpi (108dpi)

 

[Jack Tripper]

Windows Memory Diagnostic finds no problems.

 

[Jack Tripper]

i think i've isolated the glorified notepad program that is managed to
corrupt WPF/Aero/Glass. i've had the program not run for 2 weeks and had no
problems.

This morning i ran the program and within 10 minutes Start Menu and Taskbar
were unusable. i killed the program, restarted explorer, and i'll go for
another few days with the program not running.

If the problems then reappear after i try loading it again i'l have found
the culprit.

The next question is how a 10 year old text editor can corrupt Vista's
display.

My next step would have been to install a downloaded copy of Vista onto a
virtual pc, but Aero cannot work on a Trio64.

 

[Curt]

Using notepad, or WordPad, or a third party app?

 

[Jack Tripper]

Using notepad, or WordPad, or a third party app?

Third party application.

 

[Curt]

Possible that it isn't compatible with vista. Check the
error logs.

 

[Jack Tripper]

i have found a program that will cause all explorer windows (desktop,
taskbar, start menu, Alt+Tab, non-client areas) to become graphically
corrupt. The problem only happens with "Aero" enabled, and you're running in
non-96 dpi.

It's impressive that what is essentially a text editor program can corrupt
explorer. Obviously the program is doing something bad - but it should not be
able to lead to a denial of service against my computer.

If you're malicious, feel free to see what the app is doing, and reproduce it.

Screenshots:
http://hereford.homeip.net/Pictures/Vista - graphical corruption high dpi.png
http://hereford.homeip.net/Pictures/Vista - graphical corruption high dpi
2.png
http://hereford.homeip.net/Pictures/Vista - Graphical corruption high dpi
4.png

Steps to Reproduce the Problem
1. Enable Windows Desktop Composition (Aero)
2. Change system to a dpi setting other than 96 dpi (e.g. 108dpi, 120dpi),
and reboot for the changes to take effect
3. Run the problematic software (Action Outline 1.6 -
http://hereford.homeip.net/actionoutline.rar)
4. Wait 30 minutes.

i've had colleagues reproduce the problem on their own home machines.

Now that there is a reproducable way to corrupt explorer.exe, i'm sure the
guys who wrote WPF would like to see it. They might want to see how a process
running as standard user is able to corrupt another process.

 

[Jack Tripper]

Fixed in SP1

 

[Jack Tripper]

Fixed in SP1