VS 2005 has been the only application so far in which I have found a problem that’s clearly related to incompatibility with the new desktop composition done by DWM (Desktop Window Manager). It works for the most part, but apparently it has problems calculating the positions of certain on-screen elements. For example, with composition activated, the Intellisense popup always appears in front of the text I’m editing. Really just a small issue, but a pretty important one…

Switching desktop composition off for VS helps – Vista deactivates composition for the time where VS is running and re-activates it again afterwards. Not nice, because it also deactivates nice things like flip-3d task switching… does anyone know of a better solution?