Corrupt Favorites,urls

[DL]

IE6, Win2k (ntfs)
I have some (8) corrupt url's in Favorites, by corrupt I mean the url
instead of having a short name has a name comprising 200+ charactors (30+
words) and as such has I beleived exceed file nameing limits.
Tried the following
IE>Favorites>Organise ; both rename & delete.
Explorer, browse to location, both rename & delete
cmd prompt, delete
I havnt got round to trying the Consol
Any other way?
TY

 

[Jan Il]

Hi Ty

Try the following and see if it helps:

FavOrg: To save Favicons - Free
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Bookmark-Managers/favorg.shtml
This allows you to save them permanently in a different folder and
re-associate your favorites with the stored icons. It also verifies whether
your links in Favorites are still good.

 

[DL]

Afraid that didnt work - file name to long

Hi Ty

Try the following and see if it helps:

FavOrg: To save Favicons - Free
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Bookmark-Managers/favorg.shtml
This allows you to save them permanently in a different folder and
re-associate your favorites with the stored icons. It also verifies whether
your links in Favorites are still good.

 

[Jan Il]

Hi DL

If I am fully understanding you, the only thing I can suggest at this point
is that you visit these sites and make the urls shorter. It will work the
same, but, it will be much shorter.
http://snipit.info/
TinyUrl
http://tinyurl.com/
Just go there and copy paste the long urls in there and let it make smaller
ones. A word of advise, save the new url quickly, as they will not be held
long and you will have to repeat the process. Save it to notepad for the
time being as soon as it is ready.

Then, copy/paste each of the new urls into the address bar and open the
website, then resave the urls to our Favorites, then delete the others.

Also, try deleting them from the History dropdown in IE. You can delete the
urls one at a time from the History dropdown list. Just type in the
something to open the dropdown, then go to the ones you want to delete,
highlight them and then press the Delete key. See if that will work for
you.

If not, try clearing your History and Temporary Internet files on the
Tools>Internet Options>General>Browsing History (History) and TIFs.

Safely Delete the Temporary Internet Files
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/delcache.htm
works for all versions

The TIF size should be set to 50-60 MB. Larger caches tend to be more prone
to trouble.
See "Resizing your Cache"
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/delcache.htm

Hope this helps.

Jan
MS MVP - Windows IE [DTS/AumHa]
Smiles are meant to be shared,
that's why they're so contagious.

Replies are posted only to the newsgroup for the benefit or other readers.
How to make a good newsgroup post:
http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm

 

[DL]

The problem being is impossible to delete the corrupt url's either from
Organise/IE/cmd prompt
I believe its because the file names are to long (exceeded 255 characters)

Hi DL

If I am fully understanding you, the only thing I can suggest at this point
is that you visit these sites and make the urls shorter. It will work the
same, but, it will be much shorter.
http://snipit.info/
TinyUrl
http://tinyurl.com/
Just go there and copy paste the long urls in there and let it make smaller
ones. A word of advise, save the new url quickly, as they will not be held
long and you will have to repeat the process. Save it to notepad for the
time being as soon as it is ready.

Then, copy/paste each of the new urls into the address bar and open the
website, then resave the urls to our Favorites, then delete the others.

Also, try deleting them from the History dropdown in IE. You can delete the
urls one at a time from the History dropdown list. Just type in the
something to open the dropdown, then go to the ones you want to delete,
highlight them and then press the Delete key. See if that will work for
you.

If not, try clearing your History and Temporary Internet files on the
Tools>Internet Options>General>Browsing History (History) and TIFs.

Safely Delete the Temporary Internet Files
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/delcache.htm
works for all versions

The TIF size should be set to 50-60 MB. Larger caches tend to be more prone
to trouble.
See "Resizing your Cache"
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/delcache.htm

Hope this helps.

Jan
MS MVP - Windows IE [DTS/AumHa]
Smiles are meant to be shared,
that's why they're so contagious.

Replies are posted only to the newsgroup for the benefit or other readers.
How to make a good newsgroup post:
http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm

Afraid that didnt work - file name to long

 

[Jon Kennedy]

Strangely named items showing up in your Favorites menu or folder that you
cannot delete is an indication of a malware infection.

Unexplained computer behavior may be caused by deceptive software
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/827315/en-us

Use Ad-Aware, Windows Defender and/or Spybot Search & Destroy to remove it.

Windows Defender
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx
Ad-Aware: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
Spybot: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
Good sites on how to install and use Spybot -
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/tutorial/index.html
http://tomcoyote.com/SPYBOT/index1.php

Also download a winsock repair tool, to have just in case cleaning up
anything found breaks it -

Winsock repair tools:
LSPFix- all versions of Windows http://www.cexx.org/lspfix.zip
Winsock2 Fix- Win98, ME
http://www.bu.edu/pcsc/internetaccess/winsock2fix.html
LavaSoft- all versions of Windows-
http://digital-solutions.co.uk/lavasoft/whndnfix.zip

More information here:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/
http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/tshoot.html
http://spywarewarrior.com/sww-help.htm

If no joy, in IE go to Tools...Internet Options...Advanced tab, Browsing
section, uncheck "Enable third-party browser extensions", click Apply, click
Okay, reboot. If that solves your problem, then more troubleshooting is
needed to find out exactly which program, or Browser Helper Object (BHO) is
causing this problem. You don't want to leave it at that, as some BHOs are
useful or necessary - like Adobe Acrobat for reading .pdf files or an
essential component of Norton AV. Get BHODemon -
http://www.definitivesolutions.com/bhodemon.htm - read all about BHOs.
Disable all items, and then gradually replace one or two at a time to narrow
down the culprit.

Or if you have IE 6 SP-2 you can do this within the browser:
How to manage Internet Explorer add-ons in Windows XP Service Pack 2
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;883256

If all the above fails, then the problem could be something new that the
spyware cleaners above don't have in their databases yet. In that case....
HijackThis direct download:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/files/hijackthis.zip
Tutorial on how to use HijackThis:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/htlogtutorial.html
Then post it's output log to the forum here for analysis and feedback by the
parasite experts:
http://forums.spywareinfo.com/
http://aumha.net/viewforum.php?f=30
Or one of the other HijackThis Logs forums listed here:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/forums.html

Or try this program to get some of the most nasty malware:
CWShredder direct download:
http://aumha.org/downloads/cwshredder.zip

An alternate resource for all of this and more:
http://www.aumha.org/secure.htm

 

[Jan Il]

Ok...I understand, that is why I gave you the two links, as you can enter
the urls there and it will get shortened, then they will not exceed the
limit. And, as Jon mentioned, they could be some type of scumware so you
should run tools he provided to see it that will delete them.

Hope this helps.

Jan
MS MVP - Windows IE [DTS/AumHa]
Smiles are meant to be shared,
that's why they're so contagious.

Replies are posted only to the newsgroup for the benefit or other readers.
How to make a good newsgroup post:
http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm

The problem being is impossible to delete the corrupt url's either from
Organise/IE/cmd prompt
I believe its because the file names are to long (exceeded 255 characters)

Hi DL

If I am fully understanding you, the only thing I can suggest at this point
is that you visit these sites and make the urls shorter. It will work the
same, but, it will be much shorter.
http://snipit.info/
TinyUrl
http://tinyurl.com/
Just go there and copy paste the long urls in there and let it make smaller
ones. A word of advise, save the new url quickly, as they will not be
held
long and you will have to repeat the process. Save it to notepad for the
time being as soon as it is ready.

Then, copy/paste each of the new urls into the address bar and open the
website, then resave the urls to our Favorites, then delete the others.

Also, try deleting them from the History dropdown in IE. You can delete the
urls one at a time from the History dropdown list. Just type in the
something to open the dropdown, then go to the ones you want to delete,
highlight them and then press the Delete key. See if that will work for
you.

If not, try clearing your History and Temporary Internet files on the
Tools>Internet Options>General>Browsing History (History) and TIFs.

Safely Delete the Temporary Internet Files
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/delcache.htm
works for all versions

The TIF size should be set to 50-60 MB. Larger caches tend to be more prone
to trouble.
See "Resizing your Cache"
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/delcache.htm

Hope this helps.

Jan
MS MVP - Windows IE [DTS/AumHa]
Smiles are meant to be shared,
that's why they're so contagious.

Replies are posted only to the newsgroup for the benefit or other
readers.
How to make a good newsgroup post:
http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm

Afraid that didnt work - file name to long

Hi Ty

Try the following and see if it helps:

FavOrg: To save Favicons - Free
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Bookmark-Managers/favorg.shtml
This allows you to save them permanently in a different folder and
re-associate your favorites with the stored icons. It also verifies
whether
your links in Favorites are still good.

IE6, Win2k (ntfs)
I have some (8) corrupt url's in Favorites, by corrupt I mean the
url
instead of having a short name has a name comprising 200+ charactors
(30+
words) and as such has I beleived exceed file nameing limits.
Tried the following
IE>Favorites>Organise ; both rename & delete.
Explorer, browse to location, both rename & delete
cmd prompt, delete
I havnt got round to trying the Consol
Any other way?
TY

 

[DL]

Unfortunately I cannot paste/cut/copy/rename/delete/send to, these files,
either in IE or explorer, or when using third party apps
I can add the files to a zip or rar, but that doesnt remove the origonal.
No error msgs except when using Rename, then when I rename to eg Temp
'cannot rename the name you specified is to long, choose a shorter name'
(I can do these things with any other file)
The sys is clean of malaware/virus
These corrupt urls are not to any dubious sites

Ok...I understand, that is why I gave you the two links, as you can enter
the urls there and it will get shortened, then they will not exceed the
limit. And, as Jon mentioned, they could be some type of scumware so you
should run tools he provided to see it that will delete them.

Hope this helps.

Jan
MS MVP - Windows IE [DTS/AumHa]
Smiles are meant to be shared,
that's why they're so contagious.

Replies are posted only to the newsgroup for the benefit or other readers.
How to make a good newsgroup post:
http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm

The problem being is impossible to delete the corrupt url's either from
Organise/IE/cmd prompt
I believe its because the file names are to long (exceeded 255 characters)

Hi DL

If I am fully understanding you, the only thing I can suggest at this point
is that you visit these sites and make the urls shorter. It will work the
same, but, it will be much shorter.
http://snipit.info/
TinyUrl
http://tinyurl.com/
Just go there and copy paste the long urls in there and let it make smaller
ones. A word of advise, save the new url quickly, as they will not be
held
long and you will have to repeat the process. Save it to notepad for the
time being as soon as it is ready.

Then, copy/paste each of the new urls into the address bar and open the
website, then resave the urls to our Favorites, then delete the others.

Also, try deleting them from the History dropdown in IE. You can

delete
the

urls one at a time from the History dropdown list. Just type in the
something to open the dropdown, then go to the ones you want to delete,
highlight them and then press the Delete key. See if that will work for
you.

If not, try clearing your History and Temporary Internet files on the
Tools>Internet Options>General>Browsing History (History) and TIFs.

Safely Delete the Temporary Internet Files
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/delcache.htm
works for all versions

The TIF size should be set to 50-60 MB. Larger caches tend to be more prone
to trouble.
See "Resizing your Cache"
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/delcache.htm

Hope this helps.

Jan
MS MVP - Windows IE [DTS/AumHa]
Smiles are meant to be shared,
that's why they're so contagious.

Replies are posted only to the newsgroup for the benefit or other
readers.
How to make a good newsgroup post:
http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm




Afraid that didnt work - file name to long

Hi Ty

Try the following and see if it helps:

FavOrg: To save Favicons - Free
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Bookmark-Managers/favorg.shtml
This allows you to save them permanently in a different folder and
re-associate your favorites with the stored icons. It also verifies
whether
your links in Favorites are still good.

IE6, Win2k (ntfs)
I have some (8) corrupt url's in Favorites, by corrupt I mean the
url
instead of having a short name has a name comprising 200+ charactors
(30+
words) and as such has I beleived exceed file nameing limits.
Tried the following
IE>Favorites>Organise ; both rename & delete.
Explorer, browse to location, both rename & delete
cmd prompt, delete
I havnt got round to trying the Consol
Any other way?
TY

 

[DL]

They are'nt strange names, they are not dubious web sites (8 off)
eg Adaptec.com being one, 49bytes
In Explorer they are shown as 'files' they've lost their assosciation, any
attempt to reassociate fails without errs
They cannot be Copied/Renamed/Deleted/Send To, they can be added to rar or
zip
The only err msg is on Rename ' cannot rename the file name is too long,
specify a shorter name' and that when renaming to Temp or Adaptec.

The sys is clean of malaware/trojan/virus
TY

 

[Jon Kennedy]

See this article for possible help, then, if you are sure your machine is
clean and have followed the steps previously indicated with negative
results:

You cannot delete a file or a folder on an NTFS file system volume
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320081/en-us

 

[Jan Il]

Hi DK

The information Jon has posted may help. I see you have tried to delete the
Favorites folder, but, have you tried to delete the History folder and let
Windows create a new one? Can you *move* the file, to perhaps an external or
USB drive? The file is likely too big for the Recycle bin.

Hope this helps.

Jan
MS MVP - Windows IE [DTS/AumHa]
Smiles are meant to be shared,
that's why they're so contagious.

Replies are posted only to the newsgroup for the benefit or other readers.
How to make a good newsgroup post:
http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm

Unfortunately I cannot paste/cut/copy/rename/delete/send to, these files,
either in IE or explorer, or when using third party apps
I can add the files to a zip or rar, but that doesnt remove the origonal.
No error msgs except when using Rename, then when I rename to eg Temp
'cannot rename the name you specified is to long, choose a shorter name'
(I can do these things with any other file)
The sys is clean of malaware/virus
These corrupt urls are not to any dubious sites

Ok...I understand, that is why I gave you the two links, as you can enter
the urls there and it will get shortened, then they will not exceed the
limit. And, as Jon mentioned, they could be some type of scumware so you
should run tools he provided to see it that will delete them.

Hope this helps.

Jan
MS MVP - Windows IE [DTS/AumHa]
Smiles are meant to be shared,
that's why they're so contagious.

Replies are posted only to the newsgroup for the benefit or other
readers.
How to make a good newsgroup post:
http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm

The problem being is impossible to delete the corrupt url's either from
Organise/IE/cmd prompt
I believe its because the file names are to long (exceeded 255 characters)

Hi DL

If I am fully understanding you, the only thing I can suggest at this
point
is that you visit these sites and make the urls shorter. It will work the
same, but, it will be much shorter.
http://snipit.info/
TinyUrl
http://tinyurl.com/
Just go there and copy paste the long urls in there and let it make
smaller
ones. A word of advise, save the new url quickly, as they will not be
held
long and you will have to repeat the process. Save it to notepad for the
time being as soon as it is ready.

Then, copy/paste each of the new urls into the address bar and open
the
website, then resave the urls to our Favorites, then delete the
others.

Also, try deleting them from the History dropdown in IE. You can delete
the
urls one at a time from the History dropdown list. Just type in the
something to open the dropdown, then go to the ones you want to
delete,
highlight them and then press the Delete key. See if that will work for
you.

If not, try clearing your History and Temporary Internet files on the
Tools>Internet Options>General>Browsing History (History) and TIFs.

Safely Delete the Temporary Internet Files
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/delcache.htm
works for all versions

The TIF size should be set to 50-60 MB. Larger caches tend to be more
prone
to trouble.
See "Resizing your Cache"
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/delcache.htm

Hope this helps.

Jan
MS MVP - Windows IE [DTS/AumHa]
Smiles are meant to be shared,
that's why they're so contagious.

Replies are posted only to the newsgroup for the benefit or other
readers.
How to make a good newsgroup post:
http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm




Afraid that didnt work - file name to long

Hi Ty

Try the following and see if it helps:

FavOrg: To save Favicons - Free
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Bookmark-Managers/favorg.shtml
This allows you to save them permanently in a different folder and
re-associate your favorites with the stored icons. It also
verifies
whether
your links in Favorites are still good.

IE6, Win2k (ntfs)
I have some (8) corrupt url's in Favorites, by corrupt I mean the
url
instead of having a short name has a name comprising 200+ charactors
(30+
words) and as such has I beleived exceed file nameing limits.
Tried the following
IE>Favorites>Organise ; both rename & delete.
Explorer, browse to location, both rename & delete
cmd prompt, delete
I havnt got round to trying the Consol
Any other way?
TY

 

[DL]

I'm going to work through the kb article.
Will let you know result

Hi DK

The information Jon has posted may help. I see you have tried to delete the
Favorites folder, but, have you tried to delete the History folder and let
Windows create a new one? Can you *move* the file, to perhaps an external or
USB drive? The file is likely too big for the Recycle bin.

Hope this helps.

Jan
MS MVP - Windows IE [DTS/AumHa]
Smiles are meant to be shared,
that's why they're so contagious.

Replies are posted only to the newsgroup for the benefit or other readers.
How to make a good newsgroup post:
http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm

Unfortunately I cannot paste/cut/copy/rename/delete/send to, these files,
either in IE or explorer, or when using third party apps
I can add the files to a zip or rar, but that doesnt remove the origonal.
No error msgs except when using Rename, then when I rename to eg Temp
'cannot rename the name you specified is to long, choose a shorter name'
(I can do these things with any other file)
The sys is clean of malaware/virus
These corrupt urls are not to any dubious sites

Ok...I understand, that is why I gave you the two links, as you can enter
the urls there and it will get shortened, then they will not exceed the
limit. And, as Jon mentioned, they could be some type of scumware so you
should run tools he provided to see it that will delete them.

Hope this helps.

Jan
MS MVP - Windows IE [DTS/AumHa]
Smiles are meant to be shared,
that's why they're so contagious.

Replies are posted only to the newsgroup for the benefit or other
readers.
How to make a good newsgroup post:
http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm



The problem being is impossible to delete the corrupt url's either from
Organise/IE/cmd prompt
I believe its because the file names are to long (exceeded 255 characters)

Hi DL

If I am fully understanding you, the only thing I can suggest at this
point
is that you visit these sites and make the urls shorter. It will

work
the

same, but, it will be much shorter.
http://snipit.info/
TinyUrl
http://tinyurl.com/
Just go there and copy paste the long urls in there and let it make
smaller
ones. A word of advise, save the new url quickly, as they will not be
held
long and you will have to repeat the process. Save it to notepad

for
the

time being as soon as it is ready.

Then, copy/paste each of the new urls into the address bar and open
the
website, then resave the urls to our Favorites, then delete the
others.

Also, try deleting them from the History dropdown in IE. You can delete
the
urls one at a time from the History dropdown list. Just type in the
something to open the dropdown, then go to the ones you want to
delete,
highlight them and then press the Delete key. See if that will work for
you.

If not, try clearing your History and Temporary Internet files on the
Tools>Internet Options>General>Browsing History (History) and TIFs.

Safely Delete the Temporary Internet Files
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/delcache.htm
works for all versions

The TIF size should be set to 50-60 MB. Larger caches tend to be more
prone
to trouble.
See "Resizing your Cache"
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/delcache.htm

Hope this helps.

Jan
MS MVP - Windows IE [DTS/AumHa]
Smiles are meant to be shared,
that's why they're so contagious.

Replies are posted only to the newsgroup for the benefit or other
readers.
How to make a good newsgroup post:
http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm




Afraid that didnt work - file name to long

Hi Ty

Try the following and see if it helps:

FavOrg: To save Favicons - Free
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Bookmark-Managers/favorg.shtml
This allows you to save them permanently in a different folder and
re-associate your favorites with the stored icons. It also
verifies
whether
your links in Favorites are still good.

IE6, Win2k (ntfs)
I have some (8) corrupt url's in Favorites, by corrupt I mean the
url
instead of having a short name has a name comprising 200+ charactors
(30+
words) and as such has I beleived exceed file nameing limits.
Tried the following
IE>Favorites>Organise ; both rename & delete.
Explorer, browse to location, both rename & delete
cmd prompt, delete
I havnt got round to trying the Consol
Any other way?
TY

 

[DL]

Resolution 4 worked for me
TY

See this article for possible help, then, if you are sure your machine is
clean and have followed the steps previously indicated with negative
results:

You cannot delete a file or a folder on an NTFS file system volume
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320081/en-us

--

Jon R. Kennedy MS MVP/IE
Charlotte, NC USA
(e-mail address removed)