Home page dashboard boxs not loaded

[joebordes]

I don't think it is the truncate, I'd say the problem is with the characters themselves. Can you add this line before the json_encode

global $log; $log->fatal($widgetHTML);

set

$LOG4PHP_DEBUG = true;

in your config file and reproduce the error.
then in the file logs/vtigercrm.log you should see the text that cannot be converted. See if you can share that with us.