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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-14T04:49:13+00:00

When hosting WPF user controls within a WinForms MDI app there is a drawing

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When hosting WPF user controls within a WinForms MDI app there is a drawing issue when you have multiple forms that overlap each other that causes very distinct visual artifacts. These artifacts are mostly visible after dragging one child form over another one that also hosts WPF content or by allowing the edges of the child form to be clipped by the main MDI parent when dragging it around. After the drag and drop of the child form is completed the artifacts stay around generally but I’ve found that setting focus to a different application’s window and then refocusing back on to my application window that it is redrawn and all is good again until the child forms are moved once again. Please see the image below which demonstrates the problem.

Screenshot of described artifacts

Those at Microsoft insist that the WinForms MDI is already a sufficient solution for MDI and doesn’t need reinventing in WPF although I find it hard to believe they tried creating a WPF app this way because of the obvious shortcomings.

UPDATE: A few extra notes that I left out is that if I create these Forms without setting the MdiParent they are created as regular forms and this issue doesn’t happen. This issue seems unique to the WinForms MDI scenario. Also I’ve currently running on Windows 7 Enterprise and I’m aware the results may be quite different on Windows XP but I haven’t been able to test this.

UPDATE: I’ve found a few other related resources on this issue that I thought I should share.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Well, I may have found a solution although it feels like a bit of a hack. It appears that if you call the Refresh method on the MDI parent whenver a child MDI Form is moved that the noted artifacts go away. Visually things appear a bit jittery when dragging a window but it seems much more acceptable than the example I showed in my original post.

    private void Form1_Move(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    this.ParentForm.Refresh();

    System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("Form Moved to: ({0},{1})", this.Left, this.Top));
}

    I’ve tried many combinations in the same vein such as refreshing just the child window that was being moved by calling methods such as Update(), Invalidate(), Refresh() and also I’ve tried these same methods on the MDI parent as well as Dispatcher.Invoke(DispatcherPriority.Render, …) and InvalidateVisual() on my hosted WPF control but none of those other methods worked accept for calling Refresh() specifically on the MDI parent.

    I realize that this probably isn’t the optimal solution since I’m forcing the whole main application window to refresh every time a child window moves a few pixels but as for right now it’s the only reasonable solution that I found that works. If anybody else has any alternative solutions or any improvements upon this I will gladly accept your answer instead.

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