Krypton Controls acting funky on Windows 7 machines

Question

So we've been getting a lot of complaints about the way our WinForms app runs on Windows 7 machines. We use the Component Factory Krypton Controls to run our UI. Now honestly, these controls were never 100% efficient. There was always some slowness and choppiness to our app, but with the upgrade to Windows 7, this has gotten progressively worse.

One of the main issues we are dealing with right now is that sometimes half the screen will turn grey, and you have to either re-size the window multiple times, or switch tabs or something to get it to "refresh" itself.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this with Krypton Controls on Windows 7 machines, and/or know of any type of fix or at least partial fix that could help clear up some of these issues?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I have never used Krypton but I downloaded the controls and noticed that they have a skinning system. I use another 3rd party WinForms controls that have a skinning system which can also be quite slow. The controls worked ok but when we switched to Windows 7, the same forms would either not display at all or be 'corrupted'.

Does your application use the skinning system? Do you have a lot of controls on these forms? The more controls the slower the forms can be. I have also found that the more layout/grouping of controls and multiple level of nesting can cause problems. We have turned off all skinning which has helped. We also found that docking and resizing worked perfectly in XP but cause a lot handles to be created and other issues in Windows 7 so now we resizing at the last possible point to reduce and excessive calls.

Do you or your customers use Windows Aero theme? The controls that I have used does not work as well with Aero. We are able to in environment tell our customers to switch to Basic if they want the best experience. We do not like this and we don't want to degrade our customers experience but our user base is not that large it is OK until the vendor 'solves' the problem.

I am not sure if this directly helps you but may one of these will point you in the right direction.