LINQ injecting Invalid Characters

Question

We are currently in the process of migrating from Server 2003 to Server 2008. We have a few different environment changes for our ASP.NET application. Our Test Environment is working perfectly at this time, but the production machine with same code is injecting Invalid Characters into the SQL.

The following is the SQL I see via SQL Server Profiler.

exec sp_executesql N'SELECT [t0].[VenuePDID], [t0].[VenueID], [t0].[VenueNumber], [t0].[MarketID], [t0].[ProgramID], [t0].[VenueTypeID], [t0].[SalesTypeID], [t0].[BackBarPaymentID], [t0].[Goal], [t0].[LocationTypeID], [t0].[VenueStatus], [t0].[Tab1ConfirmDate], [t0].[Tab1ConfirmedBy], [t0].[Tab2ConfirmDate], [t0].[Tab2ConfirmedBy], [t0].[DateContractRequested], [t0].[ContractRequestedBy], [t0].[ContractTypeRequested], [t0].[ContractAmtRequested], [t0].[ContractAmtLimit], [t0].[ContractSalesAmtRequested], [t0].[ContractSalesAmtMax], [t0].[ContractPerVistAmtLimit], [t0].[ContractSalesPerVisitAmtLimit], [t0].[ActiveDate], [t0].[InactiveDate], [t0].[WebsiteRejected], [t0].[ResponsibleGM], [t0].[CreateDate], [t0].[CreatedBः㐈   [1]     
[1] 볧इ퀄㐀޼SELECT [t0].dBy], [t0].[timestamp], [t0].[DetailConfirmDate], [t0].[DetailConfirmBy], [t0].[SalesConfirmDate], [t0].[SalesConfirmBy], [t0].[ContractTypeId]
FROM [dbo].[tbl_VenueProgramDetails] AS [t0]
WHERE ([t0].[VenueID] = @p0) AND ([t0].[ProgramID] = @p1)',N'@p0 int,@p1 int',@p0=7477,@p1=27

I've copied all of the dll's from the working test environment and I get the same thing. I have also pointed the test web server at the live db and the code works. I've pointed the live web server to the test db and the code fails just like above. At this point the issue has to be with IIS7 configuration or .Net on the production server. I cannot seem to pin point it though. Has anyone see this before?

Answer 1

Make LINQ log what it thinks it's sending. This sounds like a SQL Server Profiler bug to me rather than a LINQ bug. I could be wrong, of course.

Answer 2

CreatedB\u0903\u3408 [1] \uffff

That's not really Unicode... U+FFFF is explicitly not a Unicode character, for one!

Something appears to be spitting binary corruption over arbitrary bits of your memory. This is not going to be fun to find because it'll most likely be something unpleasantly low-level. Are there any suspicious non-managed components used by your app, or ISAPI extensions on the production machine? (Or even other hooks, like dodgy anti-virus?)

Answer 3

The issue ended up being a network card driver. The physical machine was the issue not configuration or code.

EDIT: The machine I was having issues with is a HP DL360 with Broadcom Network Cards. We will be contacting HP regarding the issue. The packets were being assembled wrong when sending the LINQ request across the wire.