Winforms TabControl alignment problems

Question

When I set TabControl alignment to Left or Right it leaves this huge space between tab buttons and tab page area. How to get rid of this useless space?

TabControl.Appearance is set to Buttons because if it is set to Normal the text on buttons disappear.

UPDATE:
When i set TabControl.Alignment to Bottom and TabControl.Appearance to Normal buttons look inverted (orange line should be below)

When i set TabControl.Alignment to Bottom and TabControl.Appearance to Buttons, There is no area on TabPage to place controls

Answer 1

This is a well-known problem with the XP visual style implementation for the native tab control, only tabs aligned to the top render properly. This bug hasn't been addressed until Windows 7. The workaround is to selectively turn off the style. Add a new class to your project and paste the code shown below. Compile. Drop the new control from the top of the toolbox onto your form and change the Alignment property to your liking. It isn't going to look prettier than that.

using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

class FixedTabControl : TabControl {

    protected override void OnHandleCreated(EventArgs e) {
        SetWindowTheme(this.Handle, "", "");
        base.OnHandleCreated(e);
    }

    [DllImportAttribute("uxtheme.dll")]
    private static extern int SetWindowTheme(IntPtr hWnd, string appname, string idlist);
}