Visual Studio and Platform Builder problems on high DPI 4K displays

Submitted by Michel on September 19, 2017 - 21:37

Working with Visual Studio 2015 in combination with Platform Builder on a 4K monitor is very frustrating. The Attach Device window always opens half outside the display area on the bottom right, the Callstack window has such tiny letters that you need to use a magnifier to be able to read it, and Visual Studio 2008 is completely unworkable because the entire IDE reverts to tiny letters as soon as you download your kernel.

I tried the compatibility wizard to no avail and had given up hope, until one of our experts found the solution!

Start regedit, browse to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers] and add a new string value with the path to devenv.exe, then set the value to "~ DPIUNAWARE" and Visual Studio and all your Platform Builder specific windows will work as they do on a normal, non-4K monitor!

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers]
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe"="~ DPIUNAWARE"
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe"="~ DPIUNAWARE"

Thanks Doug!

Update: In Windows 11 the above trick doesn't work anymore. In Windows 11 you'll need to create/set this registry key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\devenv.exe]
    "dpiAwareness"=REG_DWORD:0