WindhawkDWM Ghost Mods
This mod injects into DWM and allows you to modify the behaviour of DWM ghost (not responding) windows. For example, you can restore non-DWM window frames, making this useful for blending in non-responsive windows with the basic or classic theme.
This mod should be used with a tool such as BasicThemer or ClassicThemeTray. It enhances the behaviour of these tools, and will not work properly with standard DWM window frames.
Currently, you can:
- Disable the DWM-rendered window frames on ghost windows.
- Modify or disable the frost effect introduced with Windows Vista, which lightens the ghost window after sending inputs to it a few times.
⚠ Important usage note ⚠
In order to use this mod, you must enable Windhawk to inject into system processes in its advanced settings. If you do not do this, it will silently fail to inject. Changing the Windhawk advanced settings will also affect any other mod you have installed, and may cause instability as any other mod that injects into all processes will now inject into system processes too.
This mod will not work on portable versions of Windhawk because DWM is a protected process and can only be
modified by a system account. Since the portable version of Windhawk only runs as administrator under your
own user account, it will not have the privilege required to inject into DWM. (You may not be so lucky with
forcing the portable version to run as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM either, as this didn't work in my testing.)
Tested compatible Windows versions
The mod is tested on the following versions of Windows and is confirmed to work as intended.
- ✅ Windows 8.1 (build 9600)
- ✅ Windows 10 version 1607 (build 14393)
- ✅ Windows 10 version 1809 (build 17763)
- ✅ Windows 10 version 20H2 (build 19042)
- ✅ Windows 10 version 21H1 (build 19043)
- ✅ Windows 10 version 21H2 (build 19044)
- ✅ Windows 11 version 22H2 (build 22621)
Easy testing
You can use BadApp to easily test a hung process.
Common problems
Failed to download symbols:
Sometimes, Windhawk may fail to download the symbols for DWM. This doesn't necessarily mean that your version of Windows is incompatible, but it means that DWM cannot connect to the internet (which is how Windhawk attempts to download symbols).
You can work around this issue by manually downloading the symbols and dropping them in the Windhawk symbols
folder. In order to do this, use a tool such as PDB Downloader
and download the symbols for %SystemRoot%\System32\dwmghost.dll.
The standard (non-portable) version of Windhawk stores symbols in C:\ProgramData\Windhawk\Engine\Symbols.
If you encounter this error, a message box will be displayed warning you of the failure.
Known issues
- On Windows 10 and Windows 11, if the source window has DWM frames (you aren't using BasicThemer or anything like that), the thumbnail of the source window inside the ghost window will be overly-cropped, leaving white borders behind. This is because of the 1 pixel visual borders used for DWM top-level windows since Windows 10.