What does HRESULT 0x80263007 (DWM_E_TEXTURE_TOO_LARGE) mean?

 
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DWM_E_ADAPTER_NOT_FOUND NAP_E_INVALID_PACKET

DWM_E_TEXTURE_TOO_LARGE

Requested DWM redirection surface is too large

DWM_E_TEXTURE_TOO_LARGE is HRESULT 0x80263007 (signed decimal -2144980985, unsigned decimal 2149986311). AllStat's winerror.h text states that DWM cannot create the redirection surface because its size is larger than the machine supports.

This is a dimension or allocation-capability boundary for the chosen DWM surface path. The “texture” is the compositor redirection resource, so the relevant size may derive from a window rectangle after DPI scaling, an off-screen or virtual desktop extent, a capture surface, or another compositor-owned allocation. The HRESULT does not by itself mean that a source image file is too large or that total system memory is exhausted.

Measurements to capture

  • Requested width, height, pixel format, bytes per pixel, sample count if relevant, and calculated allocation size.
  • Logical window size, physical-pixel size after per-monitor DPI conversion, non-client extension, scaling transform, and any padding or alignment added by the graphics path.
  • Active monitor arrangement and virtual-screen coordinates, especially after connecting high-resolution displays or placing a window across outputs.
  • Adapter, feature level, driver version, maximum supported texture dimension from the actual graphics API, and current video-memory budget.

Common causes

  • A bounds calculation uses an unsigned conversion after receiving negative virtual-screen coordinates, producing an enormous width or height.
  • DPI scaling is applied twice, or a logical rectangle is mistaken for physical pixels.
  • A single surface is requested for content that should be tiled, clipped, downscaled, or captured per output.
  • A window grows beyond the limit after monitor topology or remote-session resolution changes, while the application retains old allocation assumptions.
  • The requested dimensions are valid on one adapter but exceed the active adapter's resource limit after GPU switching.

Difference from memory and adapter failures

DWM_E_ADAPTER_NOT_FOUND means the supplied adapter identity is invalid. DWM_E_NO_REDIRECTION_SURFACE_AVAILABLE reports surface unavailability without naming dimensions as the reason. General out-of-memory failures concern allocation capacity, while DWM_E_TEXTURE_TOO_LARGE states that the surface dimensions themselves exceed what the path supports. Adding RAM or blindly waiting is not a sufficient response.

Diagnostic sequence

  • Log the final pixel dimensions immediately before the DWM call and trace every conversion from layout units to pixels.
  • Validate multiplication and rectangle subtraction with checked arithmetic; reject zero, negative, wrapped, or implausibly large extents before allocation.
  • Compare the request with the adapter's documented maximum resource dimension and with a smaller known-good surface on the same path.
  • Reproduce across DPI values, monitor layouts, remote-session resolutions and hybrid-GPU selections to locate the transformation that crosses the limit.

Recovery and design

Clamp the requested region to real content bounds, correct unit conversion, and use tiling, clipping, downscaling or per-monitor resources when a legitimately large visual cannot fit one surface. Recreate resources after topology or adapter change. Retry is safe only after reducing the dimensions or moving to a path with a demonstrated larger limit; an unchanged retry will reproduce the same deterministic failure.

Telemetry

  • Logical and physical rectangles, DPI values, transform matrix and computed byte count.
  • Adapter LUID and description, driver version, maximum texture dimension and memory budget.
  • Monitor topology, virtual-screen bounds, remote/local state and target window generation.
  • Smallest failing dimensions and largest successful dimensions from controlled tests.

Practical scenario

A desktop-capture tool combines monitor rectangles, but subtracts coordinates after converting a negative left edge to an unsigned integer. The resulting width is billions of pixels and DWM returns DWM_E_TEXTURE_TOO_LARGE. Correct checked rectangle arithmetic fixes the request; increasing a memory limit or reinstalling the driver would not address the wrapped dimension.

References

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