AutoCAD Crash Caused by Odd Registry Value

In the past, we've seen issues where you would launch AutoCAD and it would immediately close with a CER dialog and possibly the message:

"This version of AutoCAD was not installed properly and some features may not run correctly. You should reinstall AutoCAD immediately to make sure all features are working properly. Do you wish to continue anyway?"

This often points to a corruption in the .NET Framework but we recently discovered a cause that was a bit more unusual.

It turns out that one source for this kind of crash stems from a bad registry entry in the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.png key. There have been user-reported cases where the value in the Content Type key contains a leading space:

In cases where someone had that leading space in the value, simply removing it resolved the crash.

We don't know how that particular registry value is getting set with a leading space but it isn't being done by Autodesk. Since that it just too odd for someone to be manually editing, I expect it is being done by some other application.

For more details, see the following Technical Solution:

Error on startup or AutoCAD is not installed properly. Please reinstall immediately.

Comments

[R.K. McSwain]

Have you guys considered changing error messages like this to include a hyperlink to a previously determined URL that can be updated to provide solutions like this?

As you pointed out, the error message you mentioned is generally a .NET error, not an 'AutoCAD needs reinstalled' error, and in this particular case, I seriously doubt that reinstalling AutoCAD will solve the problem, leading someone to waste a few hours for no reason.

If the error dialog included a link to TS1056464, that would be so much more helpful.