XCLN: WordPad and Exchange Crash When Run on Non-English NT 3.51 (152929)

SYMPTOMS

WordPad might crash and you might not be able to set up a profile for the Microsoft Exchange Windows NT client if you have just upgraded a non- English version of Windows NT from 3.51 to 4.0.

CAUSE

The Richedit control is used in both WordPad and the Microsoft Exchange client. It reads the font substitution information from the registry. The font substitution information can be in two forms. Windows NT 3.51 used a simplified form (since it didn't support multiple code pages), Arial CE=Arial. Windows NT 4.0 (like Windows 95) has the character set numbers included in the font substitutions, Arial CE,238=Arial,238

In the past (Windows NT 3.51 and Windows 95), we had either form 1 or form 2, but not both. When Windows NT 3.51 is updated to 4.0, it preserves the old settings and adds the new ones, thus both forms of substitution strings are now present. The RichEdit control was not designed to handle both forms at the same time.

WORKAROUND

Since the bugs happens due to the old (Windows NT 3.51) font substitution strings, removing these strings from the registry eliminates the cause of the bug. To remove these strings, follow these steps:

Start Regedt32.exe.

Go to

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT
                     \CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes

Remove all 'type 1' font substitutions that deal with CE, Cyr, and Greek fonts and do not have charset numbers.

For example, remove:
```
      Arial Greek:Arial
						
```
but leave:
```
      Arial Greek,161:Arial,161
						
```

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft Exchange clients, version 4.0, listed at the beginning of this article. This problem was corrected in Microsoft Exchange Server 4.0 U.S. Service Pack 4. For information on obtaining the service pack, query on the following word in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (without the spaces):

S E R V P A C K