Thread: IE7 Active-X Downloader Displays in Arabic?

This is very strange; let me give some background first:

Dell E521 Win XP SP3 Media Center with IE7. This is one of my personal computers. I use it for my online work-at-home job, so I am very cautious/particular what is loaded. I run regular scans of Malwarebytes' AntiMalware, SuperAntiSpyware & Norton Internet Security. The Norton has the software firewall and I have the computer behind a hardware firewall on the wired router. It's never been infected with anything more than cookies. I track all windows updates & program updates as they are installed, so in case I run into problems I know what has changed and can modify accordingly.

Here are the recent changes and the problem I am encountering: A couple of weeks ago I received my invite to try out Google Wave, also installing a plugin to run a feature inside their program. Okay, fine. Shortly after that, I noticed IE crashing quite a bit for no apparent reason, when I would open, say Amazon or yahoo mail. I figured it may be the new Wave application, and decided I may have to uninstall it. But I didn't uninstall it yet, and the crashes seemed to stop. Then, I noticed that my Roxio disc copy wasn't working properly and had to be reinstalled. At one point, Amazon had a free music download and I decided to try it. Amazon require you to use their "downloader" program - and when I tried to do this (it's an active-x control) I got a downloader dialog box that appeared all in Arabic, so I cancelled it and decided to forget it. Questioning their support on this, they had no clue.....

A little while later, I ran the Passmark Diskcheckup to check the HDD health and it showed one of the attributes had reached threshold and was failing. I assumed that this was the cause of the strange happenings, and not the Google Wave installation. So, I got a new HDD, cloned it using Acronis TrueImage and put it in place as Drive 0 over this past weekend.

Now, when I am working in the virtual environment, everything is fine, because I have limited drivers loaded. But, after work, when I am in my regular login with all drivers loaded, the computer will work fine, and then, after sitting idle for some time, (with only Carbonite running in the background), all of a sudden I'll get a BSOD for BAD_POOL_HEADER.

I identified a problem with Adobe Flash & ShockWave Player, so I uninstalled both of them. When I tried to reinstall Flash Player, again, when it gets to installing the Active-X, I get this dialogue box in Arabic! I cancelled it out, and used the alternate download, and "save to HDD" instead of the live install. Then it installed in English. But it still didn't work, so I just uninstalled it and figured I was done with Adobe (especially since their software is so vulnerable to attacks anyway). Well, now that it is uninstalled, I test clicked on a SWF web page to test, and low and behold I find I have Flash player version 9 opening the file!

I am not sure what to think about these Active-X download dialogue boxes showing in Arabic. But that is the common link here - both Amazon downloader and Adobe downloader have shown it. I am at a loss. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks for any help!

So I ran the Adobe uninstaller, then reinstalled Flash v10 from the installer I had saved on my HDD. Flash is working fine now. But the system is still getting BSODs: BAD_POOL_HEADER 0x00000019; the first parameter is always 0x00000020, but the other three vary. Device Manager checks out ok. sfc /scannow didn't make any difference. I ran CHKDSK but can't remember where to find the results. Looking in Event Viewer, I see a lot of problems that seem to relate to IRPStackSize issues. The size was not specified in the registry (and it appears the default is 15 when it's not specified), so I specified it at 18. I'm not sure why that would be showing though, as this machine is not a server. The only thing I can think that might have to do with that is the Carbonite auto backup. Have to take a break for a while....

Did I mention I tried a restore to 3NOV09 system checkpoint with "no changes were made to your computer"?

I think I may have found the solution here. It starts at about page 5 of the thread.

Originally Posted by simrick

I think I may have found the solution here. It starts at about page 5 of the thread.

Unbelievable - this appears to have done the trick! Evidently there is a problem with Acronis disk imaging; using Carbonite backup (or any backup for that matter) invokes the MS Volume Shadow Copy Service and this triggers the BSOD BAD_POOL_HEADER 0x00000019. What a relief, I don't have to reinstall everything!

Originally Posted by simrick

p.s. not sure about the active-x downloader window showing in arabic though - could be another problem that was solved by the Flash reinstall........

So, it appears I have not solved the problem of the active-x downloader in IE7 showing in Arabic. It just happened again when I was trying to install the system express tag finder from Dell. I wonder if I shouldn't just bite the bullet and install IE8...maybe these problems are a result of the imminent HDD failure from the old drive before I cloned it? I can't find anything on the web of anyone else having this problem. I did find a couple of WUs waiting for me - KB931125 Root Certificates update and KB955759 XP security update. Have installed them now, rebooted and will try another active-x download to see if there is any change.

UPDATE: I installed IE8 and no difference, so I uninstalled it and reverted to IE7. Then, I discovered that the executable file for the program was not in the default location. Instead of finding iexplore.exe in the C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer directory, it was in C:\i386. So, I put it back where it goes, and BINGO! Arabic gone! Now, how did that happen? I am clueless...