Mystery Writers Forum
General Discussion and News => Technology Troubles => Topic started by: B L McAllister on October 23, 2006, 06:34:42 PM
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???
Ya know the handy-dandy clicking places that will send you to wherever the clicking place is set up to send you? The kind that show up in e-mails, etc. Usually they're underlined, and they may turn blue or some other appropriate color? Well a few weeks ago, this began to happen: when I move the cursor to the appropriate clicking place, a message appears that says, "The URL is not syntactically valid." So I click anyway, and get to the perfectly valid URL's target (e.g. http://www.Zott.com). Nothing goes wrong, so the message is unexplained. It's not exactly a problem, since the URLs work, but I'm kinda curious about what's going on. I use MS's Explorer, and for e-mail Eudora, neither of which produced those weird messages until recently. I don't think it always happens, but nearly always. Anybody know an explanation? ???
Byron
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Heck, I don't even know what "syntactically" means! And my only computer advice (when in doubt, reboot) really doesn't apply.
Janet, the not-so-helpful
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After a quick Google for "The URL is not syntactically valid.", it looks to me like the problem lies with version 6.2.3 of Eudora. Try updating to the latest version, or maybe going back one.
Otherwise, I'd run a solid spyware check on your system.
Ah, Google, the answer to everything!
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Good suggestions, all. My Eudora is 7.0.1.0, and Spybot gives me a clean bill of health. The lead entry when I Google the phrase leads to Eudora, but concerns older versions of that e-mail system, but the trouble then was somewhat worse than mine: clicking on the "clicking-places" actually didn't work for the people who posted there. My problem isn't really a problem, just a puzzle, since clicking works just fine for me, despite the attempt at discouragement. Next, however, I reckon I could look for spyware finders besides Spybot. I have a very recent McAfee, which claims to find and prevent spyware. I'm not yet certain whether the same thing happens outside Eudora; my impression is that it does, but not always. E-mail is where I get most of the examples of the puzzle, and more or less routine websurfing (I'm a pretty stick-in-the-mud kind of guy) doesn't give me a lot of opportunities to check, especially on a phenomenon that doesn't always happen. Whaddya think: since clicking works, I suppose I may as well click away and let the meaningless jargon fly by in the wind. Byron
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In a class I took recently for my GRI designation (graduate real estate institute) the instructor suggested running a program called Ad Aware in conjuction with Spybot. He said that one would find some things that the other would not. Haven't tried it myself.
Alice
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I run AdAware, Spybot, SpySweeper, and Norton Internet Security. SpySweeper was a free download with my ISP, but it's not a terribly expensive program anyhow and I think, having experienced it, that I'd pay for it if I had to. Norton almost never finds and removes anything, but I'm guessing it keeps a lot of stuff from getting through in the first place. The other three all remove things almost every week, although it's mostly tracking cookies. And if I run them one after the other, they'll still usually all pick up things.
Cathy
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???
...when I move the cursor to the appropriate clicking place, a message appears that says, "The URL is not syntactically valid." So I click anyway, and get to the perfectly valid URL's target (e.g. http://www.Zott.com). Nothing goes wrong, so the message is unexplained. ...
Curiouser and curiouser: the phenomenon has vanished completely. Maybe my computer had indigestion for a while and these were its belches?
Byron