Manipulate system/visible clipping region in Windows 1809

Solution 1:

This seems to be a bug in the relevant versions of Windows which has apparently been fixed in more recent versions.

Solution 2:

If we take ReactOS as an example, the clipping region is at dc->dclevel.prgnClip and the system region is at dc->prgnVis. When you call BeginPaint on a window, it calls NtUserBeginPaint stub which traps to its kernel counterpart through the win32k SSDT, which calls IntBeginPaint, which passes the window's update region (Window->hrgnUpdate) to UserGetDCEx, which copies this to Dce->hrgnClip and calls DceUpdateVisRgn, which then gets the visible region by calling DceGetVisRgn which calculates the visible region using VIS_ComputeVisibleRegion, which develops a complex region by traversing all child windows, all parent windows and all siblings at each level (a top level window has a parent as the desktop (((PCLIENTINFO)(NtCurrentTeb()->Win32ClientInfo))->pDeskInfo->spwnd) and all top level windows are siblings; the desktop's parent is NULL and removing the parts they cover up – this does not appear to perform any special handling for the desktop window when it gets to it like clipping to the client area, and is treated like any other window in the z order, where only what it is covering is removed). DceGetVisRgn then combines this returned visible region and combines it wil the clipping region Dce->hrgnClip and combines them into RgnVisible using IntGdiCombineRgn(RgnVisible, RgnVisible, RgnClip, RGN_AND), which is then copied into dc->prgnVis using GdiSelectVisRgn(Dce->hDC, RgnVisible). DC is the device context and DCE is the device context entry for the DC in the DC cache. Therefore, the system region of the DC is now the intersection of the visible region and the update region of the window. IntBeginPaint also calls GdiGetClipBox(Ps->hdc, &Ps->rcPaint), which calls REGION_GetRgnBox(pdc->prgnVis, prc) to copy the bound of the region pdc->prgnVis (pdc->prgnVis->rdh.rcBound) to Ps->rcPaint and then GdiGetClipBox calls IntDPtoLP(pdc, (LPPOINT)prc, 2) to convert the bound from physical coordinates to logical coordinates, which DPI-unaware apps use. The paintstruct now contains the smallest logical rectangle that contains the complex intersection of the update region and the visible region.

GetClipRgn calls NtGdiGetRandomRgn, which returns pdc->dclevel.prgnClip when called with CLIPRGN, which is application defined using SetClipRgn

An application-defined clipping region is a clipping region identified by the SelectClipRgn function. It is not a clipping region created when the application calls the BeginPaint function.

There are 2 clipping regions. One is an application defined one created by the application using SelectClipRgn and the pointer is stored in pdc->dclevel.prgnClip, and the other clipping region is system region, after it has been updated to the intersection of the system region and the update region by a BeginPaint call, where it is presented to the application as a logical clipping rectangle in the PAINTSTRUCT.

GetClipBox calls NtGdiGetAppClipBox, which calls GdiGetClipBox, which of course returns the smallest logical rect boundary of the current system region, which may be the visible region if GetDC was used, or it may be the system region intersected with a custom clipping region with GetDCEx, or it may be the system region intersected with the window update region when using BeginPaint. Your issue would imply that the system region, when calculated, is now performing special handling for the desktop window in VIS_ComputeVisibleRegion

To actually access the DC directly, and hence the System region, you'd have to start and interact with a driver to do it from the application.