puzzling IE behavior

[Joedog]

I have XPsp1 with IE6sp1.

I just discovered the following behavior:

I typed the locally DNS'ed name of an intranet site into IE, not preceded
with http:// - just the DNS name.

What actually opened was a folder on my desktop with the same name!

Then I discovered that anything on my desktop will launch from IE.

If I precede the DNS name with http:// , the site opens fine.

My IE options are set to "Do not search from the address bar" (check) and
not "Use inline autocomplete" (no check).

IE does not seem to launch anything anywhere else except the desktop.

Any explanations? Any way to disable that "feature", or even to expand it to
include more paths besides the desktop?

 

[dave]

your right, it's a feature.
Explorer will open files in any location, whether they are
on your PC or the www or an FTP server.

Try typing a path name into the address bar. e.g. "c:\"
and see what happens.

 

[Joedog]

Yes - I know the address bar will get you to a file you give it the drive
path (c:\.....) or UNC path (\\servername\dirname\.....) or protocol path
(ftp://.... or http://.....).
But what is puzzling is that I did not precede the DNS name with any path or
protocol. I thought that IE will "guess" or insert an "http://" in front of
an "address" if no path or protocol was specified.
So I was assuming that by typing in "dnsname" into the address bar, that IE
would insert "http://" in front of it, and get me to http://dnsname.
What I got instead was the folder on my desktop named "dnsname".
Also, my desktop folder is not in my computer's system variables path.

 

[Joedog]

bump

Yes - I know the address bar will get you to a file you give it the drive
path (c:\.....) or UNC path (\\servername\dirname\.....) or protocol path
(ftp://.... or http://.....).
But what is puzzling is that I did not precede the DNS name with any path or
protocol. I thought that IE will "guess" or insert an "http://" in front of
an "address" if no path or protocol was specified.
So I was assuming that by typing in "dnsname" into the address bar, that IE
would insert "http://" in front of it, and get me to http://dnsname.
What I got instead was the folder on my desktop named "dnsname".
Also, my desktop folder is not in my computer's system variables path.