Anybody managed to find a workaround for the "Black Window" bug in the Nov CTP?

Question

I think I'll create this post as a checkpoint where people can post any info on this bug. For a background, some of us using the November CTP for WPF and either Visual Studio 2005 or C# Express, are experiencing a black window when running the simplest of WPF apps (i.e an app that does nothing but window.Show()). Other people experience it intermitently in XamlPad itself.

A few links to the problem...
[1]
[2]

Answer 1

By the way, if anyone else is having this problem, please vote for this bug at the product feedback centre here. Otherwise it looks like the December CTP bits have already been finalized and the bug probably won't be fixed until the release after (and thats only if enough people are having the problem and voting for it)

Answer 2

Hi,

I just did a clean install of .NET 2.0, followed by VS C# Express from the CD image, and then installed the Nov CTP, and then IronPython 0.9.6 and I get the same issue in C# or IPython code using Avalon.

I'm going to uninstall all of the above and then reinstall the framework, Avalon and IronPython, see if I can replicate it without VS C# Express.

Answer 3

Hi, sorry, I'd forgotten about this post. But there seems to be an ugly workaround for the issue. If you set  <Window.BackGround> to an ImageBrush with the source being an image of youir choice (I chose a small plain white .gif image), then you can at least continue to work with WPF.

Answer 4

I am also having these problems, exactly as stated. My XAMLPAD did work when I first started playing (I'm on XP SP2, with VS2005 RTM, WinFX Nov CTP - no betas of .net or winfx ever installed). But after trying to create my own windows application using the VS2005 template, my XAMLPad is black.
I noticed this additional behavior - hopefully this helps diagnose the issue:
1) The posted workaround (adding a background image) makes my simple apps work
2) At one point, I was able to make my simple app work by adding an additional wrapper Grid.
Instead of:
<Window><Grid><StackPanel>...
(which would always be black)
I did:
<Window><Grid><Grid><StackPanel>...
with no properties set on either Grid. Adding that second grid made it work.  It was reproducing repeatedly, but now it doesn't...
3) The sample application DragDrop_DragText that comes with the SDK always works. I can compile it and run it from VS and it always renders, even though it does not use a background image. I have never seen it fail, even now that XAMLPad is failing. I'm not sure what is special about this app (I haven't tried any of the other sample apps).

Answer 5

This has been an elusive problem to debug and I appreciate your comments and patience. I know a couple folk elsewhere have mentioned that they were seeing 'black screen' issues on Pentium 3s. Can anyone on this thread confirm or deny that?

If you're seeing these issues on higher-end CPUs, then that rules this theory out.

Answer 6

Hi,

Using the Nov CTP I too have the 'black screen' problem. Its on an Athlon 2700 with a GeForce 6800 Ultra (driver-ver 81.94)... The 'black screen' occurs with XamlPad, the samples and self-written apps. When I quit XamlPad its window goes away but the process keeps running. Usually WPF only works for the first app I start after booting. All apps started afterwards go black. Sometimes it starts to work again (for one time) if I keep starting apps, but most of the time only a reboot helps...

hope this helps

franz

Answer 7

Does not work (black screen) on P3 with Radeon 9550.
Does work on P4 with GeForce MX400

Answer 8

Thank you all for helping isolate the problem. We have identified the source of the bug and fixed it. It had to do with an SSE2 instruction executing on non-SSE2 hardware and thrashing the FPU stack. A future release of WinFX will carry this fix.

Answer 9

I'm running an AMD Athlon MP 1800
it's reported as running at 1.53 GHz (Win2k3 Server)

Thanks.

Answer 10

It is happening on my Athlon 1800+, but not happening on my Toshiba M200 (which I think is Centrino). I think that corroborates your findings.

I guess I shouldn't expect the December CTP to include this fix? ;)

Answer 11

I'm experiencing this problem as well. I'm running the December CTP of WinFX on XP SP2 using an Athlon XP 3200+, 1GB PC3200 RAM and an ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 XT. I never experienced this issue while running the November CTP, although that was the same box but using Server 2003 SP1 as opposed to XP.

The problem does not occur the first time I compile a WPF application, or the first time I run XAML Pad. If I do anyone of these actions an then either terminate XAML Pad or the compiled application, WPF applications are no longer usable. XAML Pad comes up as a black box, as do compiled WPF applications.

Answer 12

I'm experiencing this problem on an Intel Pentium M 1,73 GHz Dotan ;) As Intel Standard my CPU has SSE2!

Answer 13

I'm currently using WinFX January 2006 CTP and STILL getting the problem. I'm not sure about which future release of WinFX that would carry the fix.

FYI, I'm using AMD Sempron 2500+ (which has no SSE2 instructions) and GeForce FX 5200 for hardware and installing Windows XP SP2 along with VS2005 RTM.

Answer 14

Apparently the January 2006 CTP contains the same bits for WPF (Avalon) as the December 2006 CTP, so the same bug will be present. The Microsoft product feedback centre states that the fix will be included in what will become the Feburary 2006 CTP. I just hope that wil be early Feburary, not late!

Answer 15

I've got the same problem here.

amd 1700+ - win2k3

hope we'll see the february release soon.

Answer 16

In house, we have only managed to reproduce the problem on non-SSE2 processors. We're really interested in getting some more details about what you did to run into the problem on an SSE2 processor, since we're concerned that this may be a separate issue that we haven't found with our internal testing.

If anyone has hit this bug on a processor that should support SSE2, can you please post to this thread, or contact me directly? We really want to make sure this is fixed.

Thanks very much!

Answer 17

I am experience the exact same problem with winfx sdk january 06 CTP and runtime on dual athlon MP 2000+

Answer 18

Jan CTP had the same WPF bits as Dec CTP. The fix for black screen problems on non-SSE2 supporting hardware is in WinFX Feb CTP.

As Alexander has said, if anyone is seeing black screen problems on hardware known to support SSE2 instructions, please reply with details or contact him directly.

Answer 19

I was informed yesterday that the fix for the black window bug is in the February CTP.

Answer 20

It seems that the issue has been fixed in February CTP, as I'm currently using.

Now is waiting for March (CTP) of Expression Interactive Designer...

Thx alot.

Answer 21

I have a Toshiba Tecrtra A4 and I tryied to install the Februeary CTP and also freeze my laptop when it restart during the logo phase.

Answer 22

Am running AMD Athlon xp 3200+ with ATI AIW 9600XT.  I got it bad.  Before logon, after logon, on internet, doing nothing.  Now that CTP Feb has fix the problem how/where can I get the fix?

Thamks

Answer 23

You can get the Feb CTP components from http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/downloads/getthebeta