My GUI is different on one of the computers on which I run it

Question

I have a .Net application that was originally created in Visual Studio Professional 2005 using the .Net 2.0 framework.

I recently opened a project in Visual C # Express 2010, made some minor changes, and built it using the .NET Framework 4.0.

Everything works like a charm, with the exception of one rather annoying part. When I launch the application on the HP EliteBook 8740w, with a 1920x1200 screen, a group of GUI controls move around so that they land on top of each other. This error does not appear when working on my 64-bit Windows 7 workstation with an external display with a resolution of 1900x1080. It also does not appear when working on a laptop running Windows XP with a resolution of 1024x768.

I tried to connect an external 1600x1200 screen to the EliteBook, but an error also appears there.

The controls that are messed up are a collection of comboboxes, numericUpAndDowns, and shortcuts that are laid out in a table layout container, which, in turn, is placed on a tab in a tab control.

I tried to create a new tab and table layout control from scratch, and then move comboboxes, etc. into a new container for the table layout, but the error prevails.

I would really appreciate help in this matter, because I do not know what else to try. I'm starting to suspect that something is wrong with the graphics on the EliteBook, but, again, everything else looks beautiful on the screen.

Thanks, Fredrick Isalsonson

--- Edit ---

Thanks for your quick replies. Before I had the opportunity to look at them, I decided that I myself had solved this problem. I came across a thread about why Visual Studio automatically resizes controls, although one of them has binding and docking properties set to None. One answer mentioned the AutoScaleMode property. I changed AutoScaleMode from Font to None in my main application window and the GUI did not display well on all my computers.

Thanks again!

/ Fredrik Yisraelsson

Answer 1

I suspect this is because the two machines have different DPI settings. This is always a pain in Windows Forms.

Here are some links that might help.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229605.aspx

http://www.sellsbrothers.com/writing/winformsAutoScaling.htm

Answer 2

This may be due to hardware acceleration. Is your application WinForms or WPF? I came across a very strange behavior when using VS2010 on Win7 64 bit just because I tried to use Hardware Acceleration when creating the application.

Improving performance by changing visual experience You may have a hardware acceleration issue in VS2010. Because of this, I had a problem with rendering applications created using WPF.

Try: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/zainnab/archive/2010/06/22/improving-performance-by-changing-the-visual-experience-vstipenv0017.aspx

And if this does not solve your problem, go to the settings of your video card (nvidia or amd catalyst) and perform "reset settings" on the computer where the application does not draw correctly. Then try again.