Microsoft recently released SharePoint Designer 2013 (SPD is a free product – you can download it here) which allows non-code luddites like myself to create magic in SharePoint 2013. However, there’s a bit of a problem if you:
- Have Visio 2010 installed on the machine you deploy SPD 2013 to
- Have SP 2013 Workflows Deployed and activated (Instructions here)
- Choose to create a 2013 Workflow
It puts you into a never-ending spiral of “Repair SPD?” then “Repair Failed; Try again?” with both Yes and No triggering the repair question again. There is no way to get out of it except for killing the thread using Task Manager… and when you open SPD again it starts the same process (essentially rendering the product useless). The actual error is:
Microsoft SharePoint Designer can’t start Microsoft Visio. An error occurred and this feature is no longer functioning properly. Would you like to repair this feature now?
MS have released a patch mid-December which addresses this issue – you can download it here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2752031
I’m surprised that this was not in the test plan, it seems a bit obvious… Ah well, we’ve all missed the obvious at some point in our lives.
B
SharePoint Blog 
Thanks for this post, it really bugged me I couldn’t modify a workflow I had made before installing Visio 2010. The patch resolved this issue.
Thank-you. I had this exact problem.
Thank you Brad! Works perfectly to me. Regards from Brazil.