.NET Framework - Disappearing Text in Windows Vista

Asked By Henrik Skak Pedersen

22-Jun-07 09:35 AM

I have encountered a bug that I can reproduce in a simple test application
that is constructed entirely in the designer within Visual Studio 2005, with
not one line of code written by me. Briefly, all the text in a TextBox
disappears whenever the mouse cursor enters or leaves the box. I've only
seen it under a very special set of conditions, summarized below. Has anyone
else seen this?

======

Details:

My test machine has insufficient graphics to run the fancy graphics features
of Aero, and only if I use the "Windows Vista Basic" theme, rather than the

All that is required is a TextBox with at least one ScrollBar, inside a
SplitContainer on a TabPage. If any of these elements is missing, it works
fine. A work-around is to call TextBox.Invalidate() on MouseEnter and
MouseLeave, but this solution is not entirely satisfactory.


This is actually a post from "The scripts"
(http://www.thescripts.com/forum/thread591155.html) but I am having the
exact same problem. Any ideas?

Best regards,
Henrik.

25-Jun-07 12:05 AM

Hi Henrik,

I performed a test based on your description and did reproduce the problem
on my side.

I searched in our inner database and found a similar issue in it. It points
out that a workaround of this problem is to set the UseVisualStyleBackColor
property of the TabPage to false.

I have tested this workaround and confirmed it works.

Thank you for reporting this issue to us!

If you have any concerns, please feel free to let me know.

Sincerely,
Linda Liu
Microsoft Online Community Support

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26-Jun-07 08:30 AM

Hi Linda,

Thank you very much for your reply.

I can see that it actually is solving my problem, but my problem is now that
the tabpages don't have XP visual style which they need to have. So I
actually can't use it.

Is this a bug which Microsoft is planning on fixing. If yes what is the
timeframe?

Best regards
Henrik Skak Pedersen.

28-Jun-07 03:44 AM

Hi Henrik,

Thank you for your response.

Alternatively, you could use RichTextBox in your application, which
doesn't have the problem.

As for fixing the problem of TextBox, Microsoft will evaluate it and
consider many aspects including fix cost, breaking changes, globalizatio,
performance, etc.

As soon as the problem is fixed, I will let you know.

Thank you for contributing to Windows Forms Whidbey!


Sincerely,
Linda Liu
Microsoft Online Community Support

28-Jun-07 04:32 PM

Hi Linda,

Thank you very much. I am looking forward to hear about the fix :-)

Cheers,
Henrik.

03-Aug-07 04:20 PM

I am having the same problem in my application. I am unable to use a
RichTextBox and I cannot set the UseVisualStyleBackColor to false. Is there
another workaround? The original poster mentioned calling Invalidate on
MouseEnter and MouseLeave. I haven't tried that yet, but I was hoping there
was a better solution.

Thanks,
-Erik Crank

17-Jan-09 04:35 PM

Did anybody solve this problem? We're getting this in a Windows Forms application when it is running on Vista.

Thank you


Rune Brahe Bjerregaard
Vestas Wind Systems A/S