Microsoft Creators Update breaking UE 4.13

As of the latest Windows 10 Creators Update update, the menus are buggy/broken in Unreal Engine version 4.13.2.

Hello VTalyh,

I have a couple of questions for you that will help narrow down what issue it is that you are experiencing.

Quick questions:

  1. Could you provide screen shots of the issues you that you are experiencing?
  2. Could you try verifying your engine and let me know if this makes a difference?

I experienced a similiar issue. Drop-Down-Menus (like Add Component, or right click on actor in the viewport) wouldn’t open in 5 out of 6 cases. Impossible to work with.

After updating to 4.15.1 the problem disappeared. As this is something I was about to do anyway that was no hard choice, but for others, especially those that are planing to release super soon, that might be different…

Hello, verifying the engine and even a brand new windows install does not fix the problem. I can only get it to work if I go into high contrast mode for windows theme. Otherwise the menus only appear if I click on the menu item and press “spacebar” to show the options. Many client projects are on 4.13 or lower, so this is a pretty big issue at the moment. This does not happen with other windows applications as far as I can see.

I checked the engine - it did not help.

I rebuilt the engine, but the result remained the same.

Hello TheAgent,

When you uninstalled the engine did you delete the app data for the engine version that is having this issue? I have provided a example file path of the default location below. Could you try deleting the 4 folders found at the location provided and let me know if this makes a difference?

Example: C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Local\UnrealEngine\4.13

This was a brand new computer with windows freshly installed. So there was nothing to delete. This is happening across all computers (3, one laptop two desktops), on all 4.13 builds. Only after the windows creators update.

Hello TheAgent,

After doing a bit more digging I was able to find that this appears to be a known issue that has been resolved. I have provided a link to the public tracker. I have also provided the changes that were made so that if you are using a source version of the engine you could make the changes yourself to try and resolved the issue.

Link: Unreal Engine Issues and Bug Tracker (UE-36752)

Code changes:

Navigate to: …/Engine/Source/Runtime/Slate/Private/Widgets/Input/SMenuAnchor.cpp

Change from (lines 438 to 442):

#if ALPHA_BLENDED_WINDOWS
							const EWindowTransparency Transparency(EWindowTransparency::PerPixel);
#else
							const EWindowTransparency Transparency(EWindowTransparency::None);
#endif

Change to (Lines 438 to 439):

const EWindowTransparency Transparency(EWindowTransparency::PerWindow);

Navigate to: …/Engine/Source/Runtime/Slate/Public/Framework/Application/MenuStack.h

Code changes:

Change from (Line 97):

TSharedRef<IMenu> Push(const FWidgetPath& InOwnerPath, const TSharedRef<SWidget>& InContent, const FVector2D& SummonLocation, const FPopupTransitionEffect& TransitionEffect, const bool bFocusImmediately = true, const FVector2D& SummonLocationSize = FVector2D::ZeroVector, TOptional<EPopupMethod> InMethod = TOptional<EPopupMethod>(), const bool bIsCollapsedByParent = true, const bool bEnablePerPixelTransparency = true);

Change to (Line 431):

TSharedRef<IMenu> Push(const FWidgetPath& InOwnerPath, const TSharedRef<SWidget>& InContent, const FVector2D& SummonLocation, const FPopupTransitionEffect& TransitionEffect, const bool bFocusImmediately = true, const FVector2D& SummonLocationSize = FVector2D::ZeroVector, TOptional<EPopupMethod> InMethod = TOptional<EPopupMethod>(), const bool bIsCollapsedByParent = true, const bool bEnablePerPixelTransparency = false);

Change from (Line 112):

TSharedRef<IMenu> Push(const TSharedPtr<IMenu>& InParentMenu, const TSharedRef<SWidget>& InContent, const FVector2D& SummonLocation, const FPopupTransitionEffect& TransitionEffect, const bool bFocusImmediately = true, const FVector2D& SummonLocationSize = FVector2D::ZeroVector, const bool bIsCollapsedByParent = true, const bool bEnablePerPixelTransparency = true);

Change to (Line 112):

TSharedRef<IMenu> Push(const TSharedPtr<IMenu>& InParentMenu, const TSharedRef<SWidget>& InContent, const FVector2D& SummonLocation, const FPopupTransitionEffect& TransitionEffect, const bool bFocusImmediately = true, const FVector2D& SummonLocationSize = FVector2D::ZeroVector, const bool bIsCollapsedByParent = true, const bool bEnablePerPixelTransparency = false); 

Make it a great day

Put -D3D12 to the shortcut target to the current version works. -opengl may work but not for mine. You can make a shortcut by going to the version download on the launcher and clicking the drop down arrow and create a shortcut to desktop or pin it to the windows 10 taskbar and paste: %AppData%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar in the explorer to find the shortcut added to the taskbar.

The 12.5 is also having troubles with this issue. I can go around with the “pressing space” fix to do some stuff, but when i need to select options to change audios or particles effects, it doesn’t show and space doesn’t fix it either. I can’t upgrade my version because it corrupts my work, I can only do this in the 12.5 version.

Thank for this solution, it works fine for me, but it’s not totally useful because it doesn’t work with version <4.15 when launching projects directly from the launcher or directly by clicking on the .uproject file.

Is there a solution to make the -D3D12 option added by default to all engine versions used by the launcher, or eventually in each project file (for exemple an option in the .ini or in the .uproject files) ?

thanks for your help

I don’t understand how his solution is supposed to work. Is it just to make a shortcut of the version that you need to use (12.5 in my case) and try to execute it on the shortcut to see if it works like that? Because I tried that and it didn’t work.

create a shortcut to the 4.12.5 version of the engine and add the -D3D12 at the end of the executable full path
( in my case, in the the shortcut’s properties, the target is exactly

“J:\Epic
Games\UE_4.12\Engine\Binaries\Win64\UE4Editor.exe”
-D3D12
then launch the engine using this shortcut
and open your project using the engine project selection.
As I said before, UE4 project files can’t be opened directly, and that’s really annoying

Hope that will help you

Thank you for explaining it to me. I’m trying to add -D3D12 at the end of the shortcut properties but I get a message saying that the folder has an invalid name if I add that.

This is how I’m trying:

“C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_4.12\Engine\Binaries\Win64\UE4Editor.exe”-D3D12

Pretty much the same way as yours, but I can’t apply it, or even press OK because I keep getting a message and it doesn’t allow me to add it.

Edit: I was just able to make it work. The difference between my target and yours is that I didn’t use a space before the code, so it didn’t work at first. Now I’m able to fully use the 12.5 version finally. This saved me. I’m one month away to finish my college and had to make my finals in this version of the Unreal. Thank you very much again.

You’re welcome
FYI, the 4.15 version doesn’t have this issue with the last window updates

Yes, I tested it out. But, I couldn’t use them because I have been working with a college group from almost a year ago doing our work in the most recent at the time which was the 12.5 version. So, for our work to not corrupt or so we don’t have to waste time remaking a lot of the stuff we decided to stay with the 12.5 version to finish it.

Thanks for posting the shortcut target fix! I’ve been so confused about this for hours!