October 1, 2005

Windows bug #177,809,378,932

Ok, this is a weird bug in Microsoft Paint. It is reproducible on every Windows XP machine I've tested in the past three days. (Some machines were pre-SP2, some were not.)

  1. Get a really big bitmap on the clipboard. The easiest way is probably to hit Shift-Print Screen to take a screenshot.
  2. Open up Paint and paste the bitmap.
  3. Hit Esc to cancel out the selection rectangle.
  4. Go to Image->Flip/Rotate... and rotate the image 90 degrees.
  5. Now choose the eraser tool and do a little erasing in the top-left corner of the image. Works just like you'd expect, right?
  6. Scroll down to the bottom-right corner of the image. Notice that the eraser tool will start erasing your image even though you're not holding the mouse button down.
I can't find any confirming reports of this bug on Google, so I suppose I'm the first to find it. Can you get this fixed, Scoble?

UPDATE: My brother did some investigation and thinks he knows why this bug is happening. The bug only occurs when you move the cursor past the original image's dimensions. We think Paint is rotating the image but forgetting to flip the internal record of the image's dimensions.

My brother also notes that the image need not be large -- he encountered the same problem with a 400x300 bitmap.

Posted by Jeffrey at October 1, 2005 2:11 PM
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