Problem: IP addresses (and other data) in profile are written to disk incorrectly or are garbled
Issue:
IP address (and other information in the profile) were being written to the disk incorrectly.
When the profile was exported to a .spf file, we found that there were unprintable characters trailing a part of the IP address (the first tuple in this case) and that the IP address was incomplete and incomprehensible.
Other data was being scrambled, with unselected settings being set, and selected settings being un-set.
Cause (probable):
Derek Tsang mentioned he had seen this issue once, and it seemed to be caused by updating or reinstalling the .NET 3.5 components after installing SES. For whatever reason, it will cause corruption in profile .spf files - specifically with the IP addresses written to the profile. There is other information that will be written with this oddball unprintable character as well, but it seems to have less impact.
Solution:
1. Ask the customer to uninstall SES.
2. Get the customer to delete the Program Files\Winmagic directory (making sure FIRST to keep their all-important keyfiles or keyfiles directory aside so that it can be re-instated after the re-installation).
3. Re-install SES.
Though that sounds drastic, there's nothing to be worried about because all the "smarts" in the server are stored within the database.
Upon starting the new SES console, this time instead of creating a new database, the customer will be connecting to an existing database.
Ask the customer to ensure that they have put the keyfile(s) back into place.