I'm in the process of upgrading from 1.3.8a to 1.3.9h. I am developing on Windows XP with apache and php v5.2.1. My customer names are missing in the Admin main page in the New Customers: section. I tracked it down to this call in /admin/includes/functions/general.php:

$customers->fields['customers_firstname'] = zen_output_string_protected($customers->fields['customers_firstname']);

The zen_output_string_protected function in turn does this...

return htmlspecialchars($string, ENT_COMPAT, CHARSET, FALSE);

For some reason the htmlspecialchars function is wiping out the contents of the $string value. I outputted the value of $string before it calls the function and the value is there.

Is this something wrong with my setup? Any help is appreciated. Thanks.