title: VB6 calls to ActiveX component with string parameters yield weird results
body: <p>I'm currently finishing a piece of software a now gone co-worker started.</p>
  
  <p>The app is coded in VB6 and uses a 3rd party ActiveX component to act upon a 3rd party system.  Our solution is basically an integration between their company's software and ours.</p>
  
  <p>The issue I'm having is that there's a method call that fails consistently, even though it's passed perfectly valid parameters on our side (it's a login method).  However, when I look at the trace their application offers, I see that instead of the username I specify, it tells me (roughly) "User '⚠⚠⚠' can't login".</p>
  
  <p>I figured it was likely to be an encoding issue as the ⚠ character replacing the characters I give it to log on seem to be there because the characters are unknown, but nothing I did could fix it.</p>
  
  <p>Anyone know of an issue with VB6 communicating with ActiveX components like this?  Or anyone have an idea what I could try?  I'm at a loss here and if the issue is on their side, it'll be a pain to get it fixed as we don't have their source code.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance.</p>