Resolve Synergize Web Explorer Login Error: GetUserPreference – ErrorMsg Due to Illegal Character Set in Preferences

Use this article to resolve situations where the user has at least one character from an illegal character set in preferences which cannot easily be found in SQL. The user cannot log in to web explorer and receives the following error:

GetUserPreference - ErrorMsg: -1 Server message: GetUserPreference - The '<' character, hexadecimal value 0x3C, cannot be included in a name. Line 1, position 256

  1. To summarize:

    1. No permission issues with user account.

    2. Refreshing COM+ applications does not resolve issue.

  2. Instead, contact DBA to run the following query against the deployment database:

Update UserSettings Set UserName='OLD_DOMAIN\USERNAME'

FROM UserSettings

WHERE (UserName = 'DOMAIN\USERNAME') AND (Consumer = 'SynergizeWebExplorer')

  1. This will reset that user web explorer preferences and they should be able to log in.

  2. From here, the preferences need to be reconfigured again manually.