SYMPTOMS

User is an unable to log into web explorer with following error along the lines of:

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

No permission issues with user account – refreshing COM+ applications does not resolve issue.

 CAUSE

User has illegal character set in preferences which cannot easily be found in SQL.

 RESOLUTION

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')

This will reset that user’s web explorer preferences and they should be able to log in. From here, the preferences need to be reconfigured again manually.