Subsets appear incorrectly in the Microsoft Developer's Network (MSDN) Library. Some of the subset names appear with garbage characters.

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This problem will occur is you have more than one language version of the same MSDN Library is installed on the Windows 2000 computer. For example, this problem could happen on a Japanese system with both the Japanese and English versions of the October 1999 MSDN Library installed.

Windows 2000 copies the subset file (.chs) from the MSDN installation directory (.\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\MSDN\[month]\[langID]\[collection].CHS) to the User Profile directory for the current user. By default the subset file is placed in the following location:

.\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Microsoft\HTML Help
				

The problem occurs because the subset file name is the same for all language versions of the same MSDN Library. When the second language version of the same MSDN Library is installed, the original .chs file in the User Profile directory gets overwritten with a new .chs file. Viewing subset information that was intended for a different language MSDN Library can result in garbage characters appearing in the subset list.

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When two language versions of the same MSDN Libraries are installed, you must choose one of the language versions to correctly display subset information. It is currently impossible to have subset information appear correctly for both language versions of the MSDN Library.

The original subset file is still located in the MSDN installation directory. For example, the English October 1999 MSDN Library subset file is located in the following default directory:

.\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\MSDN\99OCT\1033\MSDN930.CHS
				

One of the language-specific .chs files can be copied into the User Profile directory as described in the "Cause" section. That same language version of the MSDN Library will now display subset information correctly.

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Microsoft has confirmed that this is a bug in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

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Note that when working with international versions of the MSDN Library, only 7-bit ASCII can be used for custom subset names. Other code pages do not work correctly and are unsupported.

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