TabControl flickering

I have a TabControl in which I add / remove several TabPages.

I get flickering issue when I add enough pages so that the navigation buttons have to be shown.

I have no flickering at all when the navigation buttons (2 arrows to navigate left - right) are not shown. The flicker is in no way related to resize of the form or pages being added.

I have tried:

DoubleBuffering
SetStyles(... all the params to increase performance)

EDIT: In my main WinForm, I added this code to prevent a rendering bug when resizing my window:

protected override CreateParams CreateParams 
{
    get
    {
        CreateParams cp = base.CreateParams;
        cp.ExStyle |= 0x02000000;
        return cp;
    }
}

When removed, I no longer get the flickering in my TabControl. It seems that I will have to live with the resizing rendering bug as it is more convenient that a constant flicker.

Solution

You left out an important detail. This question strongly suggests you did more than you described, you are also overriding the CreateParams property in your form to turn on the WS_EX_COMPOSITED style flag for the window. It enables double-buffering for the form and all of its controls, a good way to suppress flicker in general.

But it can have some detrimental side-effects. TabControl is in fact a trouble-maker, something messed up about the way it renders that is incompatible with WS_EX_COMPOSITED. Once too many tabs are added and the navigation buttons appear, it starts to constantly redraw itself. Perceived as rapid flicker. The native tab control renderer has lots of bugs, the Microsoft team that wrote it did a very lousy job.

There is no known workaround for this bug, you'll have to settle for a lesser alternative.