Good point, must I say that MSDN help sucks then ComboBoxEx Control Styles ComboBoxEx controls support only the following ComboBox styles: CBS_SIMPLE CBS_DROPDOWN CBS_DROPDOWNLIST WS_CHILD No where does it say it supports in the CreateWindow() CBS_AUTOHSCROLL Anyways, fixed, thanks

Fill the client rect with grey before DrawImage or change your image.

There is an article here you should read then: CreateGrayScaleIcon A nice little function that creates a sharp-looking grayscale version of whatever is passed in. Also, it's pretty easy to modify the function to do other image manipulation on icons. Post faster, post more, post now

Read this: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2009/08/21/9877791.aspx[^] The two key portions are: "WM_NOTIFY is basically a sender-defined version of WM_USER" "It is an unwritten convention that the notification codes for the common controls are all negative numbers. This leaves positive numbers for applications to use for their own purposes."