Strange characters on Subject Line.

  • Thread starter Thread starter ferg
  • Start date Start date
F

ferg

G'day List,

Some of my Outlook 2003 users experience this problem.
Strange characters are appearing on the subject line, like:
RE: ????????HELP!!!! or,
???D???WHAT'S GOING ON WITH THE TYPEFACE???? ???????

I could not find anything about this on support.microsoft.com.

Anyideas anyone?

Thanks
 
Can you clarify, if someone creates an e-mail, are you saying that a subject
miraculously appears with strange text?

Or do they receive e-mails with normal looking subjects and when they hit
"Reply", the subjects change on their own?

Paul DS.
 
Paul,
Thanks for the reply.

Someone in the domain sends an email to someone else or to all with the
subject line Aflac.
The recipients sees ??Aflac.
Other stuff like:?? ????MDB Transport Queue Folder??

Also when they reply it adds other Japanese characters, square boxes, etc.

Thanks
 
Reads like some sort of scribbler (some code writing to places it shouldn't
and effectively corrupting the message somewhere along the line). If you
have a complex system, try and isolate the fault to specific servers and/or
clients.

If you are au fait with Ethereal, see if you can spot at which point the
crud gets added. Another test might be to see what the e-mail looks like in
the "Sent" folder of the sender in case the client is generating a bad
e-mail.

The consider, are there any thrid-party add-ins in the system? Can you
remove them and see if they have an affect?

Have you run any diagnostics over the Exchange database? If you are using
non-local folders and the e-mails are stored on the central database, it may
be corrupt. Back it up and then run diags.

Hope this helps,
Paul DS
 
It was my Antigen causing the problem.
I restarted the Antigen service and the problem is cleared up.

Thanks
 
I hope you'll be reporting this fault. This sort of thing can be an
absolute pig to solve and the damage such a scribbler can cause is beyond
imagination!

Paul DS.
 
Yeah. You are right.
I actually placed a "Paid Support" call to Microsoft Professional Tech
Support as I thought it was the E2K3 Server.
We troubleshoot a number of items and confirmed it was the E2K3 server and
NOT the Outlook2003 clients and the problem occured even in Outlook Web
Access.

So we started looking at other "services" that was running on the exchange
server. After stopping the Antigen Service the problem ceased.
Since Antigen was bought out by Microsoft, the support person wanted to
transfer me over the the Antigen group but, after being on the phone for
over two hours I was not too eager to get transferred, so I simply restarted
the Antigen services and all's well.

My application log did reveal that on Wednesday afternoon the Antigen
service soptted disgracefully and, though it evidently started up again,
there were unresolved issues.

So my restart solved that issue even though I am not satisfied as to why and
how.

Thanks though for your pointers.

Best wishes.
 
FYI, there was a bad Kaspersky .dat file update last week that caused all
kinds of havoc with Antigen and caused mysterious errors across most clients
who used Antigen. A new .dat update this week cleared up the problem so you
should not have any further "mysterious" issues.

Mine manifested in thousands of "conflict" messages cluttering my Synh
Issues folders.


--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.

After furious head scratching, ferg asked:

| Yeah. You are right.
| I actually placed a "Paid Support" call to Microsoft Professional Tech
| Support as I thought it was the E2K3 Server.
| We troubleshoot a number of items and confirmed it was the E2K3
| server and NOT the Outlook2003 clients and the problem occured even
| in Outlook Web Access.
|
| So we started looking at other "services" that was running on the
| exchange server. After stopping the Antigen Service the problem
| ceased.
| Since Antigen was bought out by Microsoft, the support person wanted
| to transfer me over the the Antigen group but, after being on the
| phone for over two hours I was not too eager to get transferred, so I
| simply restarted the Antigen services and all's well.
|
| My application log did reveal that on Wednesday afternoon the Antigen
| service soptted disgracefully and, though it evidently started up
| again, there were unresolved issues.
|
| So my restart solved that issue even though I am not satisfied as to
| why and how.
|
| Thanks though for your pointers.
|
| Best wishes.
|
|
| || I hope you'll be reporting this fault. This sort of thing can be an
|| absolute pig to solve and the damage such a scribbler can cause is
|| beyond imagination!
||
|| Paul DS.
||
|| ||| It was my Antigen causing the problem.
||| I restarted the Antigen service and the problem is cleared up.
|||
||| Thanks
 
Back
Top