I was trying to use a bitmap image in a DraftSight drawing on a Windows 10 computer, but the image only showed up as a white box. Or rather, after updating to the latest version of DraftSight (2015 x64 SP3), the image was properly displayed once inserted, but then turned into a white box as soon as I tried to do something, like zoom or draw a line.

After lots of googling I was able to find a solution to the problem, namely to update the Intel graphics driver. I got the hint from this forum discussion:

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=394819

To download and install a better Intel graphics driver, I used the following link:

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/detect.html

One funny thing that occurred during the update was that it looked like the new drivers that were to be installed were of an older version than the ones already installed. I think the version number started with 15 whereas the already installed driver had a number starting with 20. I also got some warnings that I was trying to install an older driver.

Anyway, I clicked OK despite the warnings and after I let the Intel utility install the graphics driver and I restarted the computer, the reference image shows up as it should in DraftSight. It no longer becomes a blank white box as soon as I zoom or do something else.

This blog post is mostly a reminder to myself on how to update phpMyAdmin (and WordPress) the next time I need to do that. It turns out that updating is quite simple and mostly involves copying a few files:

1. Download and unzip the new version of phpMyAdmin.
2. Copy or move the unzipped folder with the new phpMyAdmin version next to the old phpMyAdmin folder (might be located under xampp).
3. Copy config.inc.php from the old folder to the new one.
4. Rename the old phpMyAdmin folder to e.g. phpMyAdmin<old version number> in case it is ever needed again.
5. Rename the new directory to phpMyAdmin (from e.g. phpMyAdmin-4.5.3.1-all-languages).

I found (approximately) these instructions here: https://www.ostraining.com/blog/coding/update-phpmyadmin/

As a bonus, here is how to update WordPress:

1. Temporarily set the variable max_execution_time in xampp\php\php.ini to a sufficiently large value, maybe 240 (seconds).
2. Click on the update link on the WordPress dashboard
3. Hopefully it does not time out. If it does, increase max_execution_time further.
4. Set max_execution_time in php.ini back to the normal value (maybe 30).