Disable DWM on Windows 11 (27898)

im using windows 11 canary 27898, and have come across threads and programs that disable DWM. i decided to go ahead and rename the dwm.exe file to dwm.exe.bak and see what happens when rebooting.

after restarting, windows black screens at login. so i then renamed it back and simply killed the process after logging into windows. it black screens for a second then comes back with dwm.exe running again.

is it possible to disable DWM on later Windows 11? i did try the NoMoreDWM.exe program and it worked


i wonder how that program works to not black screen like with me

Why do you want to disable DWM?

For goodness sake,,,WHY? It's asinine for anyone to even consider it..
Modern versions of Windows rely heavily on DWM for core functionality, and disabling it can disrupt the entire graphical interface leading to instability, visual glitches and even crashes.

Performance reasons. This particular app clearly states "requires ExplorerPatcher or StartAllBack" (presumably to take over missing features).

garlin said:

Performance reasons.

Click to expand...

How much? 5%, 10% or anything noticeable.

Sounds like the latest craze on Reddit and YouTube.

I dunno. There's desperate people on older PC's who play competitive online games. And they're trying to shave every percentage point of performance. It's an entire sub-culture of DWM-haters.

I can truly admit I'm too old to play those games, so I can't blame Windows "bloat" as my excuse.

Hi @garlin

I'd much rather use the computer than endlessly tamper with Windows. Been there done that years ago and gave up on it as a waste of time.
I don't play competitive games online either, 68 years old with reflexes that are not fast enough anymore for that sort of thing.

when i used windows 7, i could disable dwm.exe with no issue. it appears alot of the GUI depends on DWM nowadays, including the taskbar. dwm also controls the transparency and other desktop effects which i disable anyway

when looking at pictures from the NoMoreDWM github, the system reminded me of my Linux machine with no taskbar or icons, and just a terminal window. if need be, i can just enable DWM and other services to get the GUI back for maintenance.

i tried looking through the code on the NoMoreDWM github for clues as too what its doing to help figure out why im blackscreening at login, but its hard to read the code.