Visual Basic issues in Windows August 2019 Updates

Martin Brinkmann
Aug 15, 2019
Windows, Windows Updates
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20

Microsoft added a new known issue to all cumulative updates that it released for Windows client and server versions in August 2019.

The issue states that applications may stop responding if they use Visual Basic 6, Visual Basic for Applications, or Visual Basic Scripting Edition. Apps may throw the error "invalid procedure call error" in that case.

After installing this update, applications that were made using Visual Basic 6 (VB6), macros using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), and scripts or apps using Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) may stop responding and you may receive an "invalid procedure call error."

Cisco XenApps appear to be affected by the issue according to a post on Born's site.

windows visual basic issue august 2019

All cumulative updates that Microsoft released appear to be affected by the issue. The known issue has been added to release pages for all supported versions of Microsoft Windows:

Microsoft notes that it is investigating the issue currently and that it plans to distribute an update as soon as the issue is resolved.

Microsoft revealed plans last month to disable VBScript by default on machines running Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008 R2 or 2012 R2. The company disabled VBScript on machines running Windows 10 a month early already.

Microsoft has not revealed additional information about the issue; it is likely that it is related to the announced disabling of VBScript on all versions of Windows.

Organizations -- and the bug affects organizations for the most part -- who run apps or tools that require a Visual Basic flavor may want to block the August 2019 updates until the issue is resolved. Those who have installed the patches already can uninstall the Windows Updates to resolve it.

Closing Words

An issue that affects all different versions of Visual Basic on all supported versions of Windows, that is a major one. Microsoft really needs to rethink testing and evaluating of updates to avoid major breakage like this from happening especially if it concerns in-house products like Visual Basic.

Now you: what is your take on this issue?

Summary
Visual Basic issues in Windows August 2019 Updates
Article Name
Visual Basic issues in Windows August 2019 Updates
Description
The August 2019 cumulative patches for all supported versions of Microsoft Windows cause major breakage with Visual Basic applications.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. Abraham Petit said on October 9, 2019 at 10:42 pm
    Reply

    We keep a mission critical legacy application in VB6 since year 2000. Up until now we have not experienced any issue yet. However we are very aware of new patches and changes in Microsoft current platform (Windows 10) that could affect our work flow. If that happened I think we could think seriosly in going back to Windows 8 or Windows 7.

  2. John said on August 17, 2019 at 4:23 pm
    Reply

    Yes we agree. VB6 is still a decent dev platform. We support quite a few very big corporate applications in VB6 and continue to add user improvements to the systems. These are VB6 systems with hundreds of thousands of lines of source code, well written and work fine. We looked at migrating / rewriting a couple years ago and the costs would be astronomical and a huge endeavor. If you know of a migration strategy that would work for us which is budget friendly we would sure take a look.

  3. EP said on August 17, 2019 at 4:55 am
    Reply

    hi Martin

    MS has just released the KB4517297 update for Win7 that fixes the VBA problems.
    Ditto for KB4517298 for Win8.1 that also resolves the VBA issues. both released late afternoon of Aug. 16.

    Same for the KB4512494 cumulative update for Win10 v1709 that includes the VBA bug fixes.

    All other Win10 versions will get the VBA fixes later this month.

  4. Adam said on August 16, 2019 at 3:39 pm
    Reply

    Solution (not easy but it works):

    1. Replace all Variant types by using any other strong type in your VB6 code
    2. Compile & run

    it looks MS blocks VB6 code execution with Variant type

  5. Adam said on August 16, 2019 at 3:10 pm
    Reply

    There is a problem with Variant type.
    Once removed from VB6 code and replaced by other simply types it starts to work.

    It looks MS is blocking code with Variant type used.

  6. Adam said on August 16, 2019 at 2:56 pm
    Reply

    It is total disaster. It looks many custom important apps written in VB6 are not working and there is no other way then uninstall the latest patch to make it working. MS please fire whole Windows QA team and remove this blocker.

  7. XP said on August 15, 2019 at 9:47 pm
    Reply

    VB6 may be a couple decades gone… but VBA is all over the place. Just hit ALT-F11 in the latest greatest Office products to bring the up the ‘Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications’ window. If they broke that VBA then they’ve really punched a lot of companies in the gut. It may be a silly scripting engine, but given its ability to automate Office, it’s ubiquitous.

  8. vbguyny said on August 15, 2019 at 8:43 pm
    Reply

    @VBisdeadlonglivePython, the issue is that the problem affects VBA in addition to VB6 which is used in Office products today.
    BTW, Python was introduced in the 1980s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language)#History

    1. VBisdeadlonglivePython said on August 17, 2019 at 3:53 pm
      Reply

      vbguyny, Python was released in 1990, and that was just version 1… and Visual Basic was released 1991, just a year later…

      Since then, Python version 2 was released in 2000; version 3 in 2008; the latest 3.x release is 3.7 which was released in 2018; the latest 3.7.x release is 3.7.4 which was released in July this year.

      Notice a pattern here? Python is frequently updated and is the fastest growing language by FAR according to the TIOBE index.
      Meanwhile, Visual Basic hasn’t been updated since VB6, which was released in 1998 and discontinued by MS in 2008, the same year Python hit version 3.

  9. Sunny said on August 15, 2019 at 7:22 pm
    Reply

    This is a big issue. Lots of companies and organisations have made many custom programs using Visual Basic or Visual basic for Applications.
    This is because making a Visual basic program is easier and faster than using C++ or javascrpt, and are faster and have more acces to a OS api’s than webapps.
    Is becoming clearer that we can no longer trust Microsoft to deliver quality software.
    They are killing their own software with their own updates.
    Too bad the EU is too weak, divided and capitalist to start a central mayor project to develope all the software they need as free open source programs.
    Maybe China or some caring billionaire will do this.

  10. VBisdeadlonglivePython said on August 15, 2019 at 6:17 pm
    Reply

    Visual Basic 6? Are you kidding me?! Who the hell is still running some old ass VB program from the early 2000’s?
    This is a total non-issue and in fact, I hope MS never even bothers to fix this “bug”.

    1. Abraham said on October 9, 2019 at 11:02 pm
      Reply

      Ok, You got a electrical car humm? There are many people out there who is using gas Camaros from the 80s. We simply love them, and we will not change easily, maybe out sons or grand sons will do. And tell you boy, We have tested our VB6 algorithms agains VB.NET, C# and Python, Guess which one got faster babe??? You bet! VB6 still ROCKS! on 2019!

    2. Python is third party softwar said on August 16, 2019 at 10:52 am
      Reply

      Grow up!

    3. Gary said on August 16, 2019 at 1:29 am
      Reply

      Plenty of organizations still use VB6 apps
      Just like Financial institutions still use Programs written in the 80s with dBASE and applications written in COBOL. Just because its not the in thing doesn’t mean the businesses are going to rewrite code that still works.

    4. SpywareFan said on August 15, 2019 at 10:29 pm
      Reply

      I use a lot of VBA, and so do other professionists, since there are no low quality python alternatives to achieve the same result…
      I’ll be happy to spare money in Office licenses if you find me an alternative way to automatically grab data from a complex xml and compile a spreadsheet, with all the entries in the right places and with the correct format and all with a single click… If not, can you pay my bills? :)

      1. VBisdeadlonglivePython said on August 17, 2019 at 3:45 pm
        Reply

        @SpywareFan, Everything you mentioned is doable and even easier in Python.
        Python can handle parsing/extracting from XML documents natively and just import something to work with spreadsheets.

      2. SpywareFan said on August 18, 2019 at 8:02 am
        Reply

        @VBisdeadlonglivePython: I’ve tested almost every possible way to achieve the same result with py, but Libre Calc macros can’t open files and xml filters have trouble managing the kind of data I have, so I’m stuck! My pro sw can export data in csv (limited) or xml (full), but also can directly create customized pdf’s, now I’m studying the Apache FOP way.

    5. Looader said on August 15, 2019 at 7:52 pm
      Reply

      Du kennst leider nicht die normale Geschäftswelt.

  11. ddk said on August 15, 2019 at 5:24 pm
    Reply

    How M$ was able to fire their QA and get away with using paying customers as testers shows how corrupt they’ve become.

    ….but this is also an indication of deeper issues and trends, the rot and decay of the cultural and economic decline in the world system.

    M$ is pretty vital in the economic and social scheme of things, based on their monopoly alone. Why this isn’t a security priority also is way beyond me.

    1. Panzer448 said on August 19, 2019 at 7:26 pm
      Reply

      Being that they call it a known issue means QA found it and someone else decided it was ok to release. QA Finds the bugs but the Product owners are the ones that usually decide what is fixed and what is not.

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