Infection Detected! Land F/X Has Detected a Virus-Like Contamination in This File: RegApps Corruption
If you see an Infection detected! message that mentions "virus-like contamination" while using Land F/X in CAD, you are experiencing drawing corruption in one or more of the files you've brought into your plan as Xrefs. You are not seeing this message because of a virus or malware in your Land F/X installation, your CAD installation, or your computer. Land F/X has generated this message to alert you to drawing file corruption, which has been known to cause smart objects (such as plants and irrigation equipment) to lose all their data. You can address the issue by cleaning your drawing files, including all Xrefs, using our RegApp Cleanup tool, linked below.
Issue
You saw the following Infection detected! error message while using Land F/X:
Infection detected!
XXXXX corrupt objects detected
Land F/X has detected a virus-like contamination in this file. We do NOT recommend you continue to work in this file until you use the Autodesk cleanup utility.
You might see an Infected detected! message every time you open a file in CAD, in only a few files, or even just one.
If you clicked Why is this happening to me? in the error message, you ended up here. So what's the story with this error, and what can you do about it?
Quick video
Cause
You're experiencing an issue with corruption in one or more of the files you've Xrefed into your drawing. The corruption is the result of the presence of objects known as Registered Applications, or RegApps. Although RegApps are necessary for smart objects to function correctly within CAD, a flaw in their basic design structure can cause them to accumulate and result in corruption.
In almost all cases, the "Infection detected!" message is alerting you to a problem originating from RegApps in external references (Xrefs) that are attached to your drawing.
As stated in the error message, this dialog box serves as notification that Land F/X cannot offer technical support for the file you currently have open for any reason other than cleaning that file.
Land F/X doesn't cause corruption – we just detect it!
Drawing corruption is not an issue that originates from our software, although you might encounter it when using our software. It's the result of AutoCAD objects that can be present in any drawing, and most commonly originate in files created by civil engineers and other consultants, which you've Xrefed into your plan. See the following links for more information:
"There's one thing I want to ask you about: There's that big orange box that comes up that warns about RegApps. How much would I have to pay you so I can have it and distribute it internally to my CAD users who never clean their files? They come to me saying I'm getting this message and I ask did you read it?"
–Adam Bauer, IT, Olsson Associates
Drawing corruption is a major source of headaches and lost work for CAD designers. Although it can occur for a number of reasons, cleaning your drawings frequently is the best way to prevent it. See our Drawing File Cleanup: Addressing DWG Corruption webinar for a run-through of the process of cleaning your drawings and to pick up some effective techniques for detecting and troubleshooting corruption when it strikes.
Solution
1. Close CAD if you have the corrupt drawing set open.
In addition, any other users in your office or network who currently have the corrupt drawing set open also need to close CAD at this point.
Do not skip this step if you currently have the infected drawing set open.
It's absolutely crucial that you, along with all other users who currently have the corrupt drawing open, close CAD at this point. If not, the corruption will remain in any open files.
Also note that only users who currently have the corrupt file(s) open will need to close CAD at this point. Anyone in your office who is currently working in CAD but does not have the corrupt drawing file open will not need to close CAD at this point.
2. Autodesk provides a cleanup utility that can fix this issue by correcting corruption in any number of DWG files. We've developed our RegApp Cleanup tool to run this utility for you.
After you've verified that you and all other users with files open have closed CAD, use the link below to download our RegApp Cleanup tool. Download the file to a location where you can easily find it, such as your desktop or Downloads folder.
3. Run (double-click) the file RegAppCleanupInstall.exe you just downloaded.
No compatible editions found on this system
Autodesk creates a new cleanup utility for each new year version of CAD. If you're running a version that just came out a few days, weeks, or even months ago, the utility may not yet exist for your version. In this case, you may see a message similar to the one pictured to the left.
If you see a warning like this one, follow our steps to clean your drawing. Autodesk will likely create a cleanup utility for your version in the near future, but our cleanup steps should do the trick in the meantime.
4. If asked whether you want to allow this app to make changes to your device, click Yes to continue.
5. In the screen that opens, click OK to install Autodesk's RegApp cleanup utility.
6. You should now see a shortcut for our RegApp Cleanup tool on your desktop.
Run (double-click) this shortcut.
7. In the dialog box that opens, click Browse.
8. Navigate to the folder that contains the drawing file(s) you want to clean.
Select that folder and click Add.
Take care to clean the correct files, including Xrefs.
In most cases, corruption originates in external references (Xrefs), so you'll need to clean each of the files you've attached to your main drawing file as Xrefs. Sometimes those Xrefs are in a different path or drive from the other drawing files, you'll need to take care to clean all Xrefs. More information on Xrefs
Note that the cleanup utility can process any number of drawings at a time. When you select a folder, all drawings in that folder will be selected and, as a result, cleaned.
9. All drawing files in the folder you selected will now be listed in the cleanup utility dialog box.
Click OK to clean the drawing file(s).
Important: Leave the Regapp ID threshold at 50.
You'll see a Regapp ID threshold just above the OK and Cancel buttons. Do not change this number from the default of 50.
10. You'll now see a message showing how many RegApps have been purged. Click OK.
Your drawing file(s) should now be clean!
The "Infection detected!" message is your friend!
Although we understand it can be irritating to keep seeing this warning when you open a drawing file, we assure you that it's anything but a nuisance. It's a legitimate warning that at any point, any number of the smart objects in your plan may become nothing more than plain AutoCAD entities – that is, lose all their assigned data. We've had clients with entire sheet sets of detail callouts wiped out in this way, as the common Xref was present in all sheet files. Others have had seemingly random numbers of plants suddenly stop being plants. Or entire irrigation plans that were now unresponsive. That's hardly a loss in functionality – it's a virus-like issue that can cause literally days of downtime.
The hope is that we can instill an appreciation (and healthy fear) of the massive cost of re-creating an entire plan. Even if it takes an hour to locate the source of drawing corruption and address it, it's time well spent – plus it's a fraction of the time required to deal with a massively corrupt drawing.
Further issues and questions
If the AutoCAD cleanup utility isn't working for you, you can also try a few additional steps.
First, try downloading the cleanup utility tool manually.
You may need to download and run the Autodesk cleanup utility directly.
Is the tool still not working? Here's what to do next:
Complete the following steps in the following files:
- Your main drawing
- All Xrefs you've attached to the main drawing (remember to detach them first)
- All detail drawings containing details you've placed in your drawing or the Xrefs
To correct the problem, you'll need to physically open each Xref and run the DelRegApps command on on your main drawing and each Xref (including any nested Xrefs), as well as any details you've placed in the drawing or Xrefs
Type XREF in the Command line, then press Enter.
The Xref Manager will open, listing all Xrefs in the current drawing.
Double-click an Xref to open it.
Although you'll want to delete the RegApps from every single Xref in the drawing, note that the Xrefs with large file sizes (more than a couple of megabytes) are the likely culprits causing the error.
Type DelRegApps in the Command line, then press Enter. The excessive RegApps will be deleted from the file, and the Command line will show the number of RegApps that have been deleted.
Repeat these steps for the remainder of Xrefs shown in the Xref Manager to delete the rest of the RegApps from your drawing.
Have you cleaned all files and Xrefs, and the RegApp warning keeps appearing? What about your details? You'll also need to edit each and every one of your detail drawings and clean those drawings as well.
What If I Don't Have Access to All Xrefs?
In a large multi-discipline office, it's quite common that Xrefs will be attached with full paths to the original files prepared by the civil engineer or other discipline. Those files are commonly updated at irregular times, making it difficult to know when each file has been changed. In these cases, it's imperative to communicate with your colleagues in the other disciplines so they can clean the files themselves.
Civil engineers will usually not have access to software as helpful as Land F/X, so they may not be receiving automatic reminders that they are sending out infected files.
It's also important to recognize that the software responsible for this issue has been out of production for more than a decade, yet these infections are still common. So it's obviously extremely virulent, if not a true virus.
Close
If this warning is popping up when you open each of your drawing files, it could be that a file such as the drawing containing your standard title block is actually causing the infection.
We recommend "etransmitting" the drawing set to a separate location. You can then sort all the Xrefs by file size and then methodically determine the source of the infection.
Close
You can prevent this issue by implementing our drawing corruption prevention strategies as an office-wide standard.
This includes cleaning each of your drawings (including Xrefs) as you receive them. It's important to note that excessive RegApps can spread from one drawing to another – in the act of Xrefing a file, or even when you have a corrupted drawing open when you open another drawing.
You can use one of the following methods to clean your files:
- Run our Nuke tool on drawings received from others
- Complete our recommended manual drawing cleanup steps
Moving forward, it's absolutely imperative that Xrefs undergo a quarantine process and are thoroughly cleaned before you Xref them into production drawings and details. You simply don't have the time to fix the problems that arise when drawing corruption has spread not only through an entire drawing set, but through all associated details as well.
Close
Our users are often told by a CAD manager they can’t clean colleagues' drawings, often in the case that an in-house Civil 3D user has created the drawings that are the source of the corruption.
This is a reasonable request, but the CAD manager should also know about the consequences of that decision. The warning message referenced in this article is a serious one – the Civil 3D users are providing corrupted drawings to other departments. In this case, you essentially have two options:
- Keep using the corrupted drawings, and deal with the known issues those errors will cause: file slowness, problems with Xrefs, block scaling, crashes, ACAD commands misfiring and not working, etc., or
- Create a system of only Xrefing in a cleaned copy of the other department’s files until they can fix the errors in the source drawing
If you absolutely need to keep the proxies in the drawings from the Civil 3D users, you can try completing the manual drawing cleanup steps but not running the AECTOCAD command at the end. If you test the file(s) and determine that AECTOACAD is the only fix, your Civil 3D department will need to understand that they have to fix their templates.
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Contact
- Land F/X
Our software tailors AutoCAD® to the needs of landscape architects, irrigation designers, and other professionals. We automate your most tedious tasks and ensure accuracy, giving you more time to design.