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This is the strangest, most baffling problem I have ever encountered.

Basically when I use any PHP forum software other than phpbb it works fine but when I use any version of phpbb greater than 3.0.1 it goes all weird and any file that has any sort of connection with the database outputs some weird text like this then exits.

‹„UmoÛ6þœþŠ«‚õC½9‰Û²0ÇvÓÙš¹Ù‚| DÚ"*‰I¿ Øß‘’)K1Á %Š÷ÜÝsÏ¢·³OÓ‡¿îçé"‡ûßnî~š‚ãúþSߟ=ÌàÏ?ßAèðYKžjߟÿ–i] }»ÝzÛOÈ•ÿ°ðw%4fÍ­«¬G5uâÈúØy©Æ¯Ø‡ƒÁ 6s€r9vr-#4Ž ¦ —}]óÍØIE©Y©]½¯˜ÍÓØÑl§}ƒ1‚4#R1=^ë¥{í€GšëœÅ·¬d’ä0—RÈȯ7#¥÷9ƒÖ€¤J9ñÿ¢·ÓÙäaògþ›3ø‘+^!AE(ååÊÞÿSsø –Œ«øßlaü0‚ŒñU¦Oµ¹› E›Õn I¿¬¤X—ÔME.äNç—óÙ›º?À.IÁóýœ»uÊ)[IJÊœsøIJJrY¾aš§x;‘œäç H©\Å$_") úÕEÿòº×vÜrÙJ ßó®Ž17i’aÎË/çøORÍ7ÌÜm¸âšQóà!úýÁ†L—²TH¢¹@ŒR”¬†ÉĆɖÉlÖÁ+&“èÔÚn%©Ðê™{èÕÂ+\̆‹ün9Õ&¶ YEVÌ5j²> ’óÂKSžç2]m‹¥ºŽ2g£ÄºeŠBVŒ:p)‘IƒàU¤dyK2—bðj¹?Ø_ ‰A‰œS#€ÓÉàæzÚ³!1#ZW7rÐǶÉ!9¡Ì=¤Õ7qv!š¶i“’åXâÉfèõêIÏ:C=½¿š~òÍ‘W‹jx¨_ÏV°&¦Ý6 G§S{›±kväÂ^uájzêàÿÛIM×´ú¨Ý@ß‘s—•žéó¶$r¶Ô†3Ožžb3I"ߎœ8òë g»œÓ±sä ‡Ÿ!ÈìÉ;ñÉñ¹U{Ü>‰p6J¶;žïĦײ-@g8&µs>ò "øÑ"é7͉R%kAgšj™½“(PÜ9©OÇŸ½ƒùbñi ¾æ8à)J¤™½v5ïs±â)Ø$W ‹”h’Åà1ì˜LJ0VÍù4]K‰cf›qœÖK¦ÓÌëŒ+›£÷Ø¥ˆbbÆéd)8²Sžk1,¥ûíº÷J†‰Ý")L(Î Ž,¢M^$¾l ¥HrÔJŤÂÊ«iŒª¸qW Í—{ë-±X¤eòܲ¤ J›Öþÿx^î˜`"¿2Eiê×ýëÈ¢X¦Z÷bË[ɪ¬º¹w©¨ö#l² 87kÏ®Wv}ÿWëÛŒvI⥢@aÕ·8·ª––«Ñ¯3~ãÿÿ\‡…þW

Every page has a slightly different output. I have searched a heap of times in google and it seems like this is a unique problem. I have tried both SQLite and MySQL both have this problem. I am using XAMPP 1.7.3 on Windows, heres what it contains.

Apache Friends XAMPP (Basis Package) version 1.7.3
  • Apache 2.2.14 (IPV6 enabled)
  • MySQL 5.1.41 (Community Server) with PBXT engine 1.0.09-rc
  • PHP 5.3.1 (PEAR, Mail_Mime, MDB2, Zend)
  • Perl 5.10.1 (Bundle::Apache2, Apache2::Request, Bundle::Apache::ASP, Bundle::Email, Bundle::DBD::mysql, DBD::SQlite, Randy Kobes PPM)
  • XAMPP Control Version 2.5.8 (ApacheFriends Edition)
  • XAMPP CLI Bundle 1.6
  • XAMPP Port Check 1.5
  • XAMPP Security 1.1
  • SQLite 2.8.17
  • SQLite 3.6.20
  • OpenSSL 0.9.8l
  • phpMyAdmin 3.2.4
  • ADOdb v5.10
  • FPDF v1.6
  • Zend Framework 1.9.6 Minimal Package (via PEAR)
  • Mercury Mail Transport System v4.72
  • msmtp 1.4.19 (a sendmail compatible SMTP client)
  • FileZilla FTP Server 0.9.33
  • Webalizer 2.21-02 (with GeoIP lite)
  • apc 3.1.3p1 for PHP
  • eAccelerator 0.9.6-rc1 for PHP
  • Ming 0.4.3 for PHP
  • PDF with pdflib lite v7.0.4p4 for PHP
  • rar 2.0.0-dev for PHP
  • Xdebug 2.0.6-dev for PHP
  • libapreq2 v2.12 (mod_apreq2) for Apache

Thanks for your help!

1 Answers1

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My first guess is that it's some problem with Unicode like it's getting double-converted.

Unicode -> Latin -> Unicode

or

Unicode -> Unicode

or similar. I'm not sure where to direct you to look but I'd say it's possibly somewhere where the configuration of the database and phpbb disagree on the character encoding.

Dennis Williamson
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