XADM: Downloading Messages Using Outlook Express Crashes Store

A Dr. Watson error occurs with the Store.exe process when you are downloading messages using a POP3 client, such as Outlook Express.

A full-fidelity download of a multipart/alternative type message is failing, where the text/plain alternative type is a tag without a content- type header, which causes the crash. The information store does not convert the message properly when using Outlook Express build 4.72.2106.4(Internet Explorer 4.01).

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Exchange Server version 5.5. For more information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

This is not an issue using the Outlook 98 client.

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Exchange Server versions 5.0 and 5.5. This problem was first corrected in Exchange Server 5.5 Service Pack 2.

The issue was resolved by changing the inbound text converter, so that if the content-type header is missing, the converter sets the media type for the node to TEXT/PLAIN, so that cvtrLookup does not see a NULL string.