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On my PC with Windows 7 SP 1, the borders of all non-resizable windows (for example all dialog boxes or the calculator) look like the left of the two images below. The border is far too thin and overlaps itself (look closely at the circled areas). The right image shows how it should look like, based on a web search.

All windows that have a resizable border look correct. Further research showed that the problem appears on all windows that lack the WS_BORDER window style. Adding that style manually on a window (with the SetWindowLongPtr function) makes the problem go away, although that window is then resizable, which is generally undesirable.

Has anyone ever seen this problem before or has any idea where to search for the problem?

Broken window borders enter image description here

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Looks like your Border Padding setting has been turned WAY down.

Window Color and Appereance

Note in this picture it's set to "1", and the corners look exactly like your problematic ones. By default this setting would be "4".

To get to the above window:

  • Right-click desktop.
  • Click Personalize.
  • Click Window Color.
  • Click Advanced Appearance Settings...
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  • Nope, that's not it, the border padding is set to 5 on my machine. Also, this value only seems to be applied to resizable windows (which do appear correct) and not to non-resizable ones like dialog boxes (as you can see the dark gray padding is missing from the dialog box in your screenshot). – Fritz May 5 '14 at 20:13
  • Weird. If you change that setting, and then apply it, does it have any affect on it? Does this problem happen in Safe mode, and/or for other users? – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 May 5 '14 at 20:15
  • Wait, I answered without really reading there, my fault. Actually "Active Window Border" is set to 5 and "Border Padding" was set to 0... setting it to 1 does indeed fix the problem. Thanks, I will accept your answer right away! – Fritz May 5 '14 at 20:19
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    The strangest thing is that I never ever opened that dialog before researching the problem. I actually thought that it didn't exist anymore after Windows XP. – Fritz May 5 '14 at 20:24

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