Exetools Server options changes?

[JMI]

Hello fellow problem viewers:

I had similar problems as reported by nullz, but did not get any virus warning which he reported. After several days with the board freezing on me whenever I attempted to access threads in the Software Forum, and only there, I asked my fellow admin from the Woodmann Forum, dELTA, to take a look at the issue from a fresh perspecitve, because something was screwing up my efforts to even see the problem with either IE and Opera.

When he took a look at the Software Forum, he noticed something which didn't show on my browser, which was that there were "special" characters showing in several of the threads. He was also getting a notice on every page that he needed to download a language pack.

Putting two and two together, he concluded that these "special" characters might be screwing up the Thread Preview feature in some way. I was not seeing the "special" characters, because I've installed the Chinese language pack so I can look at the Chinese Area with a translator. I got tired of all the square boxes in place of the Chinese characters.

The Thread Preview is the feature which causes a box to open when you mouse over the Thread Titles and gives you a "preview" of the text of the thread. The default on the vBulletin installation is 300 characters, and for some reason, it was choking on the "special" characters, which seem to be related to those using Chinese language enabled machines. We've had a substantial increase in new members posting from China since the registration was opened and there appears to be something which are added when they type English that was causeing the "Preview" to fail and it was blocking the refreshing of the pages in the Software Forum, but, at least for me, not anywhere else.

Yesterday, I turned the Thread Preview function "off" in the vBulletin Options and that seemed to "cure" the problem. I haven't had the time to try some number of characters less than the default 300 yet, but will later, as time permits. At least for me, with it set a "0" I no longer have problems on that Forum. I will keep watching the issue and post on the vBulletin Forum and see if they can provide a solution to the issue.

Regards,