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November 17th, 2021 09:00
G5 5505 / .NET applications / bad video rendering
I recently bought a G5 SE 5505 Ryzen model in the spring for software development. It has worked great for the first few projects I completed on it, but these were targeting win32 native, and arm microcontrollers. I've recently had to work on some of our Microsoft .NET windows applications, and low and behold, all of them were having issues rendering the graphics. There is some kind of bug in the video driver for the G5 5505 that retains the last bitmap/icon you select and then errantly writes it all over the face of your application. The only way to clean up the unwanted graphics artifacts is to resize the Window. Then it all corrects until you start moving the mouse pointer again.
If you have the source code for these applications, you can rebuild them with software rendering only, and the problem goes away (i.e. "RenderOptions.ProcessRenderMode = RenderMode.SoftwareOnly;")
Initially I thought it might be only .NET 4.0 applications, but I just made one in the 5.1, and it still has the problem. Its ALL of them. This affects a whole lot of programs.
I have Windows 10 Pro 21H1 (all latest updates) and Dell Update for G5 5505 says I am completely up to date on drivers.
Anyone know the source of this issue? I could probably disable the G5's video driver and go to Windows 10 defaults and it would go away, but what's the point of having a G5 if you have to disable the hardware video acceleration?
bladebreak
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November 18th, 2021 11:00
I'm going to follow this up with some further discoveries I have made. The issue only affects WPF (and possibly Silverlight) applications. Win32 and WinForms apps don't show the issue.
Dell support did reach out to me after this post and attempt to help. We tried manual reinstallation of a few key drivers, but it did not help. The only thing that is not stock about my G5 is that it came with Windows 10 Home, and I upgraded it to Windows 10 Pro (via Microsoft store). They recommended reinstalling to factory Dell Windows 10 Home which I am not willing to do due to time constraints, and that I need the features that come with Pro to get my work done. I am going to have to accept this defect for now.
ChromeoAZ
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December 30th, 2021 12:00
I am actually having the same issue and had a heck of a time searching for this problem online. You are the first and only person I have found that has the same exact issue I have. What's unfortunate for me is that I am a developer who uses Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code to make desktop apps, and not only were my apps wigging out on this machine, several other apps on my computer would blank out the button text or show squiggly color where links should go. This only seems to happen with WPF or WinUI applications and certainly doesn't have a problem with buttons or other UI elements made with HTML. Example of the problem below:
I bought this computer despite its high price tag because I wanted something fast and reliable to increase my productivity and hopefully have a better developer experience, but so far, I've been let down -- at least in this regard. Everything else about this laptop is great. I just don't know why I've been experiencing these weird visual bugs as you have, and it honestly makes me wish I had gone with something else.
bladebreak
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January 18th, 2022 11:00
ChromeoAZ! I just found the root of the problem. Go into Task Manager->Services, and stop the service called "nahimic". It is a gaming service of some sort. Probably came with the Alienware stuff put on by Dell. We as Dell customers are not the only ones affected. Look here:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/505672/weird-rendering-issues-in-wpf-apps.html?childToView=700074#answer-700074
Dell, please put a note of this issue into your support dictionary!