Projecting an image catalog to Mercator with a central meridian other than 0 crashes ArcMap

Description

** This issue is addressed in ArcGIS 9.0 Service Pack 2 (SP2) **

If an ArcGIS 8.3 MXD contains an image catalog and the projection of the data frame has a central meridian other than 0, attempting to open the MXD file in ArcMap 9.0 or ArcCatalog 9.0 will crash the applications. The user will receive the following error message:

Arcmap.exe - Application Error
The instruction at "0x728312d3" referenced memory at "0x00000004". The memory could not be "read".
Click OK to terminate the program.

Cause

Workaround

1. Rename an element in the path to the image catalog so that the path is wrong.
2. Open the MXD in ArcMap. Since the path to the image catalog is wrong, ArcMap will not find the images and will not draw them.
3. Change the projection of the data frame to a projection with a central meridian other than 0.
4. Save the MXD and close the map.
5. Reopen the MXD and reset the path to the image catalog. The image catalog will now draw and will not crash ArcMap.