I think we tipped her for the service.

Best I could come up with on such short notice.

Got pinged bigtime by majik. G


"PA Bear" wrote in message
...
Screen wipe, please.

Steve Cochran wrote:
No. Not me.

I hope you aren't too good a friend of my wife. She never mentioned you,
but I've been afraid something could be going on. She's never home.


"KRISTINE CAMPBELL" wrote in message
...
I am curious, Steve. Do you live in Maryland. If you do, and you live
close to Leeds road, I am a good friend of your wife. My name is
Krissy.
But, I am just curious, you may not be the only Steve Cochran in the
world.

--
KRISTINE CAMPBELL
"Steve Cochran" wrote in message
...
Try going to Start | Program Access and Defaults and make OE default
and see
if that fixes it.

steve

"Alan J Robertson"

wrote
in message news Robert Aldwinckle wrote:
Let's examine your examples in more detail then.

Are the examples you gave from HTML E-mail?
How did you extract them? E.g. with right-click Copy Shortcut
or by capturing the text portion of the anchor?
(I'm thinking that HTML source may be the problem
in a similar way that phishing sites exploit it.)
Also a common problem with HTML links is for posters
to try pasting in a partial URL and then editing it,
not realizing that they are only editing an anchor's displayed
text, not the actual HREF itself. In order to do that
in OE they should use the Edit menu's Remove Hyperlink
command, edit the text and then when it is converted
to a link the HREF and the text will be the same.

Thanks very much for all your advice, Robert. The problem is
actually
occuring on my parents' machine - I use Outlook myself and don't
have
any
problems with it. Unfortunately I've only been home for the course
of
this week and have been trying to fix it while I was here - I think
it
may
all be a bit too complex for them to try scripting, etc.

The examples of sites not working all come from e-mails and
newsgroup
postings. The majority of these are NOT HTML based, but in fact
plain-text. It's possible that these are ALL plain text, I can't
quite
remember for certain. This certainly confirms that the problem is
not
due
to a malformed URL in the message itself. As I mentioned it seems
to
be
the case that sometimes a link will work, other times it doesn't.
Many of
the links are from automated plain-text forum e-mails notifying me
of
an
update to a thread I'm watching - this may however just be because
most of
the links I click on in e-mails are in those types of e-mails!

Sometimes the links work, yet in the very next e-mail I'll find it
doesn't
work. These are e-mails sent from the same site and the same
server.

Interestingly it seems that right-click and copy shortcut does NOT
work on
links where I've clicked and received an 'invalid syntax error'
message.
I instead have to highlight the text and do a copy and paste.

I've clicked on a number of links in Firefox (I use the portable
verion on
a USB stick to monitor some newsgroups) and have had no issues at
all
with
links there.

So in summary it seems to be a problem with URLs in plain text
e-mails
that OE is automatically turning into links. It does not seem to be
related to the URLs themselves as far as I can tell - sometimes a
URL
will
work and then refuse to work a few hours later. Almost identical
URLs
will work/not work with no discernable pattern.

At least the workaround of highlight, copy, paste does work, it's
just
annoying that the problem is so inconsistent!

Any suggestions from the MVPs? - is this linked to the MSKB article
I
referenced initially?

Cheers

Alan




---
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Virus Database (VPS): 0606-2, 02/07/2006
Tested on: 2/7/2006 8:20:02 PM
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http://www.avast.com

Steve Cochran wrote:
Try going to Start | Program Access and Defaults and make OE default
and see if that fixes it.

steve

Tried that already- didn't make any difference.

The problem is still occurring - less frequent than before but definitely
still happens.

Alan

"Alan J Robertson" wrote
in message . uk...
Steve Cochran wrote:
Try going to Start | Program Access and Defaults and make OE default
and see if that fixes it.

steve

Tried that already- didn't make any difference.

The problem is still occurring - less frequent than before but definitely
still happens.

Alan

tontos
clare escribió en el mensaje
...

"Alan J Robertson"
wrote in message . uk...
Steve Cochran wrote:
Try going to Start | Program Access and Defaults and make OE default
and see if that fixes it.

steve

Tried that already- didn't make any difference.

The problem is still occurring - less frequent than before but definitely
still happens.

Alan

----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Aldwinckle"
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie6_outlooke xpress
Sent: Friday, January 27, 2006 10:22 PM
Subject: Invalid syntax error on some URL links in OE

"Alan J Robertson"
wrote in message
...
OK - follow-up. I've disabled the friendly HTTP error messages but
they won't disappear! (the option is definitely unchecked) - even
tried restarting the PC, but they still persist!

Some other things I've noticed -

the "s:" link in the error message - I realised that when I hovered
the mouse over this link it wasn't actually pointing to "s:" but
instead to "res://shdoclc/syntax.htm#" - I think the s came from the
end of res.


Ah, in that case I agree--your idea about it being an internal problem
could be just as valid.

That URL is a self-reference, which you can see just by entering it
in the Address bar. I don't know if there is a way to request a
different link to be specified with it. Notice though that it perfectly
validates Frank's suggestion that scripting may be involved. Use View,
Source
on that page and do a find for script.

Hmm... there are several comments in there to give some clues about
how the Homepage() function is supposed to work, including some
instructions for testing it. The comments were obviously copied from
another
source file and there are some typos in it to make us work harder eg but
here is an example which I got to work first:

example
res://shdoclc.dll/syntax.htm#https://www.microsoft.com/bar.htm
/example

That is just an obvious example from following the comments
and adjusting them to this particular page. From there we could
experiment to see how closely to a valid URL we could come
but still result in your symptom. Clearly there are a lot of
possible cases which will not be handled by this function. Depending on
how its inputs are filtered by its callers it may be valid that it is
not coded more carefully to catch such cases.

The first thing it looks for is ://
Therefore any URL passed to it which is not prefixed by
a conventional protocol prefix will cause the symptom.

Then strangely it assumes that there must be a slash
also present. However (this is the really strange part)
if the slash is missing but the URL is otherwise fine
the end result is somehow the whole expression!

example
res://shdoclc.dll/syntax.htm#https://www.microsoft.com
/example


This doesn't even get into the question of why this routine
is being called in the first place but could explain why you
are getting that s: symptom.


PS You mentioned 'taking a trace' of the problem - what does this
involve? Do you mean just a tracert?

I meant do at minimum an HTTP packet capture
so you can see both the actual requests and responses
the same as IE is seeing them. To do that you could use
a proxy tracer such as FiddlerTool or you could capture
all TCP/IP packets using netcap (from the XP Pro Support
Tools package) and format them with Ethereal (freeware).


If I copy and past the URL it shows absolutely
fine in IE, it's just when I CLICK on a link the OE that it sometimes
occurs. Do you mean some way of getting windows scripting to follow
what's happening?



Let's examine your examples in more detail then.

Are the examples you gave from HTML E-mail?
How did you extract them? E.g. with right-click Copy Shortcut
or by capturing the text portion of the anchor?
(I'm thinking that HTML source may be the problem
in a similar way that phishing sites exploit it.)
Also a common problem with HTML links is for posters
to try pasting in a partial URL and then editing it,
not realizing that they are only editing an anchor's displayed
text, not the actual HREF itself. In order to do that
in OE they should use the Edit menu's Remove Hyperlink
command, edit the text and then when it is converted
to a link the HREF and the text will be the same.

I know it's been a couple of months since I last raised this issue, but it's
still ongoing One thing I have noticed recently is I can sometimes get
it to work again by doing the following...

1) click a link of the message, find it opens IE with 'invalid syntax error'
(happens about half the time)
2) close the IE window
3) click on a different message
4) click back onto the original message and re-click the URL - this works
about 2/3 of the time. If not then repeat 1-3. Once working then clicking
a couple of links within a few minutes normally works OK.

I'm wondering if it's OE not processing a link properly - then when it tries
to pass this to OE I get the problem described.

Does anyone have any ideas??

Cheers

Alan

Its not clear what you've already done.

See he www.oehelp.com/ielnk.aspx Make sure the path to IE is NOT the
shortened path with the "~"s in it.

Also go to Control Panel | Add / Remove Programs and set the program access
and defaults to IE and OE and see if that fixes it.

steve

"Alan J Robertson" wrote
in message . uk...
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Aldwinckle"
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie6_outlooke xpress
Sent: Friday, January 27, 2006 10:22 PM
Subject: Invalid syntax error on some URL links in OE

"Alan J Robertson"
wrote in message
...
OK - follow-up. I've disabled the friendly HTTP error messages but
they won't disappear! (the option is definitely unchecked) - even
tried restarting the PC, but they still persist!

Some other things I've noticed -

the "s:" link in the error message - I realised that when I hovered
the mouse over this link it wasn't actually pointing to "s:" but
instead to "res://shdoclc/syntax.htm#" - I think the s came from the
end of res.


Ah, in that case I agree--your idea about it being an internal problem
could be just as valid.

That URL is a self-reference, which you can see just by entering it
in the Address bar. I don't know if there is a way to request a
different link to be specified with it. Notice though that it perfectly
validates Frank's suggestion that scripting may be involved. Use View,
Source
on that page and do a find for script.

Hmm... there are several comments in there to give some clues about
how the Homepage() function is supposed to work, including some
instructions for testing it. The comments were obviously copied from
another
source file and there are some typos in it to make us work harder eg
but
here is an example which I got to work first:

example
res://shdoclc.dll/syntax.htm#https://www.microsoft.com/bar.htm
/example

That is just an obvious example from following the comments
and adjusting them to this particular page. From there we could
experiment to see how closely to a valid URL we could come
but still result in your symptom. Clearly there are a lot of
possible cases which will not be handled by this function. Depending on
how its inputs are filtered by its callers it may be valid that it is
not coded more carefully to catch such cases.

The first thing it looks for is ://
Therefore any URL passed to it which is not prefixed by
a conventional protocol prefix will cause the symptom.

Then strangely it assumes that there must be a slash
also present. However (this is the really strange part)
if the slash is missing but the URL is otherwise fine
the end result is somehow the whole expression!

example
res://shdoclc.dll/syntax.htm#https://www.microsoft.com
/example


This doesn't even get into the question of why this routine
is being called in the first place but could explain why you
are getting that s: symptom.


PS You mentioned 'taking a trace' of the problem - what does this
involve? Do you mean just a tracert?

I meant do at minimum an HTTP packet capture
so you can see both the actual requests and responses
the same as IE is seeing them. To do that you could use
a proxy tracer such as FiddlerTool or you could capture
all TCP/IP packets using netcap (from the XP Pro Support
Tools package) and format them with Ethereal (freeware).


If I copy and past the URL it shows absolutely
fine in IE, it's just when I CLICK on a link the OE that it sometimes
occurs. Do you mean some way of getting windows scripting to follow
what's happening?



Let's examine your examples in more detail then.

Are the examples you gave from HTML E-mail?
How did you extract them? E.g. with right-click Copy Shortcut
or by capturing the text portion of the anchor?
(I'm thinking that HTML source may be the problem
in a similar way that phishing sites exploit it.)
Also a common problem with HTML links is for posters
to try pasting in a partial URL and then editing it,
not realizing that they are only editing an anchor's displayed
text, not the actual HREF itself. In order to do that
in OE they should use the Edit menu's Remove Hyperlink
command, edit the text and then when it is converted
to a link the HREF and the text will be the same.

I know it's been a couple of months since I last raised this issue, but
it's still ongoing One thing I have noticed recently is I can
sometimes get it to work again by doing the following...

1) click a link of the message, find it opens IE with 'invalid syntax
error' (happens about half the time)
2) close the IE window
3) click on a different message
4) click back onto the original message and re-click the URL - this works
about 2/3 of the time. If not then repeat 1-3. Once working then
clicking a couple of links within a few minutes normally works OK.

I'm wondering if it's OE not processing a link properly - then when it
tries to pass this to OE I get the problem described.

Does anyone have any ideas??

Cheers

Alan

Steve Cochran wrote:
Its not clear what you've already done.

See he www.oehelp.com/ielnk.aspx Make sure the path to IE is NOT
the shortened path with the "~"s in it.

Also go to Control Panel | Add / Remove Programs and set the program
access and defaults to IE and OE and see if that fixes it.

Hi Steve

Thanks for your reply. Sorry I'd forgotten that the previous replies on
this thread (including from your good self!) are shown on my machine but
won't be on most peoples!! I've certainly tried everything on that page.

One thing that occurred to me yesterday was that I'd forgotten that I use a
helper program called OE-QuoteFix. It's great for correcting the reply
fuction in OE so that the indentation quote marks are properly displayed.
However I've also realised that it makes some alterations when you view
messages too - I've now stopped that side of its functionality and so far
links have been working fine - fingers crossed this may fix the problem
altogether!! This problem has been going on for about 6 months for me and
because that program just works silently in the background I'd forgotten all
about it!

Cheers

Alan

Alan J Robertson wrote:
One thing that occurred to me yesterday was that I'd forgotten that I
use a helper program called OE-QuoteFix. It's great for correcting
the reply fuction in OE so that the indentation quote marks are
properly displayed. However I've also realised that it makes some
alterations when you view messages too - I've now stopped that side
of its functionality and so far links have been working fine -
fingers crossed this may fix the problem altogether!! This problem
has been going on for about 6 months for me and because that program
just works silently in the background I'd forgotten all about it!

Clicked on about 30-odd links since yesterday and no problems so I think it
really is fixed :-)

Alan