How does one disable hardware acceleration in wpf?

Question

What is the procedure for disabling hardware acceleration in WPF? What is it exactly? Is it a Windows setting, a Visual Studio setting, or something you alter in the code of your WPF project? Will it affect only the program you're running or will it be system-wide?

Does this answer your question? [Software rendering mode - WPF](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4951058/software-rendering-mode-wpf) — Wai Ha Lee, Oct 21 '20 at 10:53

Konstantin Spirin · Answer 1 · 2015-03-03T01:09:15.780

You can disable it on a Window level starting from .Net 3.5 SP1.

public partial class MyWindow : Window
{
    public MyWindow()
        : base()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
    }

    protected override void OnSourceInitialized(EventArgs e)
    {
        var hwndSource = PresentationSource.FromVisual(this) as HwndSource;

        if (hwndSource != null)
            hwndSource.CompositionTarget.RenderMode = RenderMode.SoftwareOnly;

        base.OnSourceInitialized(e);
    }
}

or you can subscribe to SourceInitialized event of the window and do the same.

Alternatively you can set it on Process level:

RenderOptions.ProcessRenderMode = RenderMode.SoftwareOnly;

The precedence order for software rendering is:

DisableHWAcceleration registry key
ProcessRenderMode
RenderMode (per-target)

score 25 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 24 '15 at 20:58

25

It is a machine-wide registry setting. See Graphics Rendering Registry Settings in the WPF docs for the registry key and other details relating to customizing WPF rendering.

The key listed is: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Avalon.Graphics\DisableHWAcceleration

The MSDN document is "not available" for .NET 4.5, so this may be a depricated option that only works in 4.0 or below.

edited Jun 24 '15 at 20:58

JPhi1618

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answered Jan 30 '10 at 22:13

itowlson

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1

_[Your answer is in another castle: when is an answer not an answer?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/225370/your-answer-is-in-another-castle-when-is-an-answer-not-an-answer)_ – Mar 03 '15 at 01:15
2

It's far better to just disable it for YOUR app. See the other answer by Konstantin – Warren P Jul 07 '15 at 15:47
@WarrenP Certainly, but sometimes you're dealing with a broken program or just you don't have access to the code, the registry becomes a last resort. – Alejandro Jan 05 '17 at 18:42
Another, I think newer link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/wpf/graphics-multimedia/graphics-rendering-registry-settings – akostadinov Apr 06 '18 at 09:07

score 16 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 10 '12 at 10:36

16

In version 4.0, you can also use RenderOptions.ProcessRenderMode to set a process wide preference (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.media.renderoptions.processrendermode.aspx).

answered Apr 10 '12 at 10:36

floele

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score 2 · Answer 4 · edited May 13 '22 at 08:45

You can also disble hardware acceleration in WPF App by adding in MainWindow the following code.