Disappearing shapes downloaded from VisioCafe

[Paul]

I downloaded a stencil from VisioCafe the other day. It was an HP ProLiant clipart stencil. I placed a shape of the ProLiant DL760 on to my drawing. As soon as I clicked off of it , it disappeared. It remained on my drawing though (while not seen) and would reappear after being moved. However, as soon as I clicked off of it, it would disappear again. I also have a shape from Dell that remains visible in Visio, but when I save the file to an HTML file, it disappears as well

Has anyone else observed this behaviour and is there a remedy?

 

[Jagadeesh [MSFT]]

Hello,

Issue is not reproducible. Please try to paste into a new drawing and verify the status. I haven't found any issues with the
shape.

Regards,
Jagadeesh.P
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Thread-Topic: Disappearing shapes downloaded from VisioCafe
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Subject: Disappearing shapes downloaded from VisioCafe
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 12:31:05 -0700
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I downloaded a stencil from VisioCafe the other day. It was an HP ProLiant clipart stencil. I placed a shape of the
ProLiant DL760 on to my drawing. As soon as I clicked off of it , it disappeared. It remained on my drawing though
(while not seen) and would reappear after being moved. However, as soon as I clicked off of it, it would disappear
again. I also have a shape from Dell that remains visible in Visio, but when I save the file to an HTML file, it
disappears as well.

Has anyone else observed this behaviour and is there a remedy?

 

[Arthur Henley]

I am having the same problem. And I have started a new
drawig and get the same results.

Arthur

-----Original Message-----
Hello,

Issue is not reproducible. Please try to paste into a

new drawing and verify the status. I haven't found any
issues with the

shape.

Regards,
Jagadeesh.P
--------------------
Thread-Topic: Disappearing shapes downloaded from VisioCafe
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From: "=?Utf-8?B?UGF1bA==?="

Subject: Disappearing shapes downloaded from VisioCafe
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 12:31:05 -0700
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I downloaded a stencil from VisioCafe the other day. It

was an HP ProLiant clipart stencil. I placed a shape of
the

ProLiant DL760 on to my drawing. As soon as I clicked

off of it , it disappeared. It remained on my drawing
though

(while not seen) and would reappear after being moved.

However, as soon as I clicked off of it, it would
disappear

again. I also have a shape from Dell that remains

visible in Visio, but when I save the file to an HTML
file, it

 

[Trev]

Greetings

The issue with that shape appears mainly in the latest versions of Visio. One thing to keep in mind is that those shapes are pretty old. You might want to use the more current versions in the Server-Intel-ML.vss and Server-Intel-DL.vss stencils as those contain all the current ProLiant servers including the DL760.

Regards

Tre


----- Arthur Henley wrote: ----

I am having the same problem. And I have started a new
drawig and get the same results

Arthu

-----Original Message----
Hello

new drawing and verify the status. I haven't found any
issues with the

shape

was an HP ProLiant clipart stencil. I placed a shape of
the

ProLiant DL760 on to my drawing. As soon as I clicked

off of it , it disappeared. It remained on my drawing
though

(while not seen) and would reappear after being moved.

However, as soon as I clicked off of it, it would
disappear

again. I also have a shape from Dell that remains

visible in Visio, but when I save the file to an HTML
file, it

 

[Trev]

Hi Jagadeesh

Question for you, are you currently up to date on all your Windows Updates for your Windows, Visio and Office? The number of messages we have been receiving about disappearing shapes has increased in the last couple months starting in December and yet we have not done anything to the shapes themselves. The shapes on my main system running Windows XP with all the Windows Updates in place with Visio 2002...like descibed, the shapes "Disappear"

So on another Desktop I've got Windows XP as well that does not have all the most recent updates with Visio 2003 and the shapes work fine.

The complaints we've received come from both Windows 2000 and XP users running Visio 2000, 2002 and 2003. Nothing has changed with the shapes so I'm wondering if a recent change to the GDI or a Windows/Office/Visio update has created an interesting Metafile disappearing bug with these shapes

Thoughts

Trev

 

[Trev]

Hi Paul,

Found the source of the problem and it is actually caused by a recent Microsoft Critical Security Update KB835732 that you probably loaded automatically through Windows Update. The Security Bulletin is MS04-011 (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms04-011.mspx) and it discusses the Metafile Vulnerability CAN-2003-0906. The specific vulnerability: "A buffer overrun vulnerability exists in the rendering of Windows Metafile (WMF) and Enhanced Metafile (EMF) image formats that could allow remote code execution on an affected system. Any program that renders WMF or EMF images on the affected systems could be vulnerable to this attack. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system."

The security update also mentions KB840997 (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;840997) which discusses a problem this security update causes with Adobe Illustrator EMF files (even opening an Illustrator EMF file in the normal Windows Photo Viewer and ACDSee caused the disappearing act with the update in place on one of our systems). This affects everything from NT4 up to XP and Server 2003 which explains why we've had a hard time figuring out why it was happening on so many different Visio/OS combinations people had who have told us about this problem.

Microsoft shows a HotFix for the EMF problem but as they state in the KB: "if you are not severely affected by this problem, Microsoft recommends that you wait for the next Windows XP/2000 service pack that contains this hotfix." This means you can only get the hotfix if you contact Microsoft Support directly and there is another note about doing that: "Note In special cases, charges that are ordinarily incurred for support calls may be canceled if a Microsoft Support Professional determines that a specific update will resolve your problem. The usual support costs will apply to additional support questions and issues that do not qualify for the specific update in question."

In regards to the Stencil with the ClipArt shapes - those were originally generated using Illustrator by the contributing author. Why some shapes disappear and others don't still doesn't make sense but at least we figured out what caused this to happen. I managed to narrow the problem down to this single update today on my Crash&Burn system running a fresh copy of XP with Visio 2003. By adding the security update... the shapes exhibited the disappearing act.. by removing the KB835732 update the shapes worked fine again but that opens up all those possible security vulnerabilities again.

Now that we know the cause of the problem, we can try to fix up the existing shapes in that set and re-post it up on the Visio Cafe page. What a mind bending experience figuring this problem out has been.

Regards,

Trev

 

[Jagadeesh [MSFT]]

Hello,

I have verified in 3 systems for the issue. All my systems are installed with the update mentioned in the postings and I have
no issues! What I suspect is that may be the video driver dependent. May I know what is the model of video card present
in your systems? Sometimes Matrox cards may also provide these kind of issues.

Regards,
Jagadeesh.P
--------------------
Thread-Topic: Disappearing shapes downloaded from VisioCafe
thread-index: AcQsji6d7AEbkAcwRMyloJgoP9XBfQ==
X-WN-Post: microsoft.public.visio.general
From: "=?Utf-8?B?UGF1bA==?=" <[email protected]>
Subject: Disappearing shapes downloaded from VisioCafe
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 12:31:05 -0700
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I downloaded a stencil from VisioCafe the other day. It was an HP ProLiant clipart stencil. I placed a shape of the
ProLiant DL760 on to my drawing. As soon as I clicked off of it , it disappeared. It remained on my drawing though
(while not seen) and would reappear after being moved. However, as soon as I clicked off of it, it would disappear
again. I also have a shape from Dell that remains visible in Visio, but when I save the file to an HTML file, it
disappears as well.

Has anyone else observed this behaviour and is there a remedy?

 

[Trev]

Hi Jagadeesh,

We have tested this on three different systems with three different Video cards and all the systems exhibited the problem. The first was on a laptop with an nVidia GeForce4 420, the second system has an ATI Radeon 8500DV and the third system also had an ATI Radeon card but a more recent 9800. We have also had messages from other user's and their Video cards have varied as well.

Upon putting in the HotFix we obtained from MS Support as described in KB840997, the "disappearing" problem stopped and the shapes worked properly again. I did not test Video Driver updates against this problem as it was occuring on different machines with completely different brands of video cards. The next items I was going to test after the Security Patches was DirectX and other broader OS related possibilities but the Security Patch caused the problem to appear first.

As mentioned in KB840997, this Security Update affects EMF files generated from Adobe Illustrator which was the software the original author of the shapes used to develop the graphics and then imported them into Visio to make shapes. Applying the patch mentioned in that KB that we received from MS Support fixed the problem. Not only were the EMF graphics not showing in Visio, an original source EMF didn't show in other software properly either which ruled out a single Application as the problem. After the HotFix patch, even those viewer applications are working again with the EMF files from Illustrator that also exhibited the disappearing issue.

Odd thing is that some of the shapes exhibit the problem while others in the same stencil do not even though the same person created all those shapes from Illustrator. There must be something in the shapes that the Security Update doesn't like - probably something the security patch looks for in the EMF data that sets it off to block the rendering of that graphic that is in some shapes EMF data but not in others.

We are looking at fixing the shapes and in the interim have sent the HotFix to the specific individuals who have asked us about the disappearing shape problem.

Regards,

Trev