IE7 Favourites disappeared!

[Captain Gadget]

In the last couple of days my IE7 Favorites (sic) have all disappeared and all I see when I click on the yellow star is a plain grey box (the same size as it used to be, though). With Windoze (XP SP2) Explorer set to view hidden and system files, I cannot see the Favorites folder, but if I try to create a new folder with the same name (or copy another over it) Windoze tells me that the folder already exists.
I can see all my individual favourites in my Norton Ghost backup, but I cannot recover them for the same reason (i.e. because the system says they're already there). Using the Systemworks bootable CD appeared to enable the system to copy them over, but when I restarted normally they were still not visible.
Anyone know what is happening? If all else fails, how can I delete the old folder (the one that I can't see) so that I can recover the favourites from the backup?
Thanks in anticipation...
Gadget :ok:

[Saab Dastard]

See what happens if you load Firefox - does it "find" your favourites?

If so, keep FF and delete IE7!

Here's a link to a few suggestions:

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/forums/index.cfm?action=showthread&threadid=265548&forumid=1

Google "IE7 Favourites missing" and see what else you find.

SD

[Captain Gadget]

SD

I downloaded Firefox and is was fine - but it did not find the IE7 Favourites. Since then I have uninstalled and reinstalled IE7 to no effect - except that something in the ClearType setup b@ggered all my Windoze fonts so I had to restore the PC from the most recent Ghost backup - all OK now.

Before all this happened I restored all my favourites from Ghost to a new 'Favorites' (sic) folder In My Documents and they are all there and they work - it's just that I can't get them to where IE7 can see them.

If I try to add a favourite in IE7 I get an 'unspecified error' message. If I try to copy either an individual favourite or the whole folder back to C:\Documents and Settings\Username\ I get the 'Replace existing file' dialog box but on selecting 'yes' I get an 'access denied' message.

I think that some malware may have been at work here but none of my countermeasures (Norton AntiVirus, Spybot, Ad-Aware) have detected anything abnormal.

Googled as you suggested (already had, in fact) - but most people seem still to have the actual folder present and visible, it's just that the Favorites list does not appear in IE7. There is a registry hack that seems to fix this - but it is not quite the same problem that I have.

Given that I have not lost the actual Favorites links (thank heaven for backups!), I guess that all I need to do is to destroy all traces of the old ones and then I should be able to restore them back to their correct location - but how, when I can't see them (even with view system/hidden files selected and on an admin logon)? Even tried it in a DOS box but the path cannot be found there either.

Grrr....

Gadget :ok:

[Saab Dastard]

Sorry I can't help more, but I can't bring myself to try IE7 for some reason - despite all the glowing reports I continue to hear about it.

Makes me wish I had IE7...

NOT!

SD

[Captain Gadget]

Yesterday evening I logged on as an admin in Safe Mode. Sure enough, my Favorites (sic) folder appeared in the right place - with all the correct saved links in it. Try as I might, however, I could not find an attribute that I could change to make the folder visible or accessible. Since Favorites is a Windoze system folder (nothing to do with IE7, SD!) I can't delete or overwrite it either.

So I now have a complete set of working favorites in My Documents/Favourites Backup (so whatever the changed attribute is it seems to be applied to the parent folder only, not to the files below it), but try as I might I cannot move them to the correct Favorites folder. I even tried going into Regedit and changing the registry key to point at a Favourites (UK spelling) folder which I created in the C:\Docs and Settings\Username folder - but for some reason it kept changing itself back again, so no joy there either.

I also tried doing a System Restore but the only accessible restore points are since the problem occurred - and even that failed.

Is this malware at work? Has anybody any idea what's going on? I've trawled the techie sites but not encountered any instances of the exact same problem.

Running out of ideas now.

Cheers all

Gadget :ok:

[Saab Dastard]

Captain Gadget,

Thanks for pointing out that it is the C: \Documents and Settings\Username\Favorites folder you are referring to - I had assumed that it was specific to IE7.

Looking at my XP Pro SP2 Favorites folder (with a star icon, rather than a folder icon), I see that it is not hidden or system at all - just Read Only.

As a result, I can actually cut the entire folder and paste it elsewhere.

What happens if you set the attributes to R, and remove all other attribs? Possibly best to use the command line (attrib).

Similarly, I can cut and paste the .lnk files (and sub folders), so it is easy to move them to other users.

It seems that something has corrupted your Favorites folder attributes - what, I canna sae, surely not IE7!!

It does sound like a permissions / attributes thing, possibly with inheritance from the parent folders involved as well.

SD

[veltech]

i am working with windows xp.i think lastly run clamwin antivirus and i cancel the scaning in middle afterthat my favorites is disappeared.i am creating new folder C;\Documents and Settings\Administrator here and renamed Favorites.but it shows error favorites folder already exist.can't view in favorites menu in internet explorer.how to solve this problem.please help me.Thanks,vel