Temporarily disable Desktop Composition in Windows 10?
Is it possible to do? It was easy to disable it in Vista and 7, and slightly more complicated but nonetheless easy to do in 8 and 8.1 as well.
Can it be done on Windows 10 reliably and repeatedly? It seems to work on a fresh install if you disable explorer, then suspend winlogon, then disable dwm. You can then proceed to reopen explorer and resume winlogon. However, after a few tries, the method no longer works. Dism and sfc/scannow seem to fix it, but that only works a few times as well. Any insight on this please?
Solution 1:
I can disable DWM on Windows 10 too. But I can agree that it is more hard then on the Win 8.1. In Process Explorer with Administrative privilegies you have to do suspend explorer.exe -> kill dwm.exe so many times as long as the theme without DWM will appear at the moment on the top of the windows* (when I tested it without doing this, the Windows 10 always got stuck)!*! -> then kill explorer.exe -> suspend winlogon.exe -> kill dwm.exe. Now you can start explorer.exe and it will works, but without modern parts (ex. Start, Searching, popups with sound, network etc.).
!*! Here the winlogon.exe can log out you and the graphics driver crash. This is the worst step.
Known issues:
- Sometimes Process Explorer crashes so I'm recommending have open Task Manager from Windows 10 too (the best thing = copy procexp.exe into System32 folder for easy launching).
- When you'll resume the winlogon.exe process, the dwm.exe will start immediately, so you can't.
- Rendering engine of the IE can work without DWM.
- Graphics driver often crashing and returning into use the "Basic Microsoft display adapter".
Screenshot: 