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

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

• Stefan.Dobrev

  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.
  
  

• KeithPhillips

  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.
  
  

• vinxter

  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 ;)

  
  

• kalpna

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

• shenk

  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!
  

• cpeterka

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

• Anand Kalyanam

  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.
  
  

• rosapdx

  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

  
  

• cvuppala1259

  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.

  
  
  

• dotnetscott

  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).
  

• Telarin

  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)
  
  
  

• Kent Waldrop Au07

  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.

  
  
  

• Paul Chin

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

• mark92929

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