texupport

In an office full of US English seats of Civil 3D, our users frequently see a dialog which reports a missing language pack when opening DWG files.  I can only assume that at one time a drawing file did contain an object which was worked on in a non-english version of AutoCAD or Civil 3D.  Since we’re seeting this more frequently, I’m a little concerned this might turn out to be yet another piece of contagious “CAD Debris” (such as Named Layer Filters [2000-2002], Scale Lists [2008], and unused RegApps [ongoing]).   According to Matt’s post in this thread, which details Autodesk’s explanation of this issue, it sounds like it’s fairly benign and the user can feel comfortable by checking the “don’t show me this again” checkbox (or, alternately, actually installing the Windows language pack).

However, it has recently come to my attention there there is also an AutoCAD specific virus being distributed in a file called ACAD.VLX which also causes the Missing Language Pack dialog.  Autodesk recently posted an article about the virus.  After following the steps outlined in the article, I determined that we do not have the infected acad.vlx file so my Missing Language Pack dialog is likely caused by an actual object in the drawing file(s).

What bothers me about Autodesk’s article about the ACAD.VLX virus is that there isn’t much information and I still have plenty of questions:

• What is the method of infection and how is the evil ACAD.VLX being distributed?
• Other than the “Missing Language Pack” dialog, is there any additional payload?
• What can users do to prevent infection?
• Do over the counter virus scanners catch this virus?

It just came to my attention that Autodesk quietly released their own RegApp cleaner a couple of months ago. This still doesn’t do anything to prevent Registered Application IDs from propagating through xrefs and inserts so unless you clean everything that your file might come into contact with, you can count on getting infected with AppIDs over and over again. Still, along with the -purge R option that was reintroduced in 2005 or 2006 (after a very long absense), it’s a step in the right direction.

Autodesk’s CleanupRegApp tool isn’t any more or less effective than cadthinking’s PurgeIDs, and in fact, its interface is lacking compared to PurgeIDs. Still, it’s nice to know that this is an Autodesk developed (and, presumably, Autodesk supported) tool to address a problem that has been swept under the rug for far too long.

When using any version of AutoCAD with two monitors or a monitor and a projector, it’s possible to position any dialog box on the secondary monitor.  This works great until you have to go back to one monitor for whatever reason.  (It does happen, particularly after using a projector).  If you find yourself with missing dialog boxes, you can reposition them by editing their position in the Windows registry.

Workarounds:
Note that all of the standard windows registry warnings apply:  You can severaly damage your system if you edit the wrong system setting in the regitry.  Only people very comfortable with registry editing should attempt this workaround.

• Shut down AutoCAD
• Start the registry editor and navigate to hkcu\software\autodesk\autocad\rxx.x\acad-xxxx:xxx\profiles\youruserprofilename\dialogs
• Under the dialog tree, you’ll see a list of all of the AutoCAD dialog boxes.  Find the one that has disappeared from your screen and directly edit its location and/or size.