Perhaps I need an HTML Guru rather than a Windows Guru.

All went well using Windows 98SE. All went well using Windows XP until I installed Service Pack 2.

I maintain two simple Web sites for bridge clubs which require posting results of games almost daily.

I maintain exact copies of the sites on my Hard Disk. When site maintenance is required, I update the simulated sites on my system before uploading new files to the actual Web sites. After checking the changes to the simulated sites, I do the upload to change the actual sites.

To check my HTML code I call up Windows Explorer and double click on an HTML file. Until recently, this has resulted in Internet Explorerer processing the HTML and displaying simulated Web pages.

Since installing SP2, the following HTML syntax does not get processed (I used XX & YY in this post instead of the HTML less/greater than signs which bracket HTML control codes)
  • XXa href=August/040818a.htmYYAfternoonXX/aYY
It causes Afternoon to display underlined, but left clicking on it does not cause the file to be processed (nothing happens when I left click). When I took a chance and uploaded the changed files to the Web Site, all worked as expected.

As far as I know both local HTML files and Web-Site HTML is being processed by the same Internet Explorer (Version 6.0).

I copied my HTML code to a Diskette and tried it on a computer at one of the bridge clubs, using Windows Explorer. It worked as expected.

I tried right click on Afternoon (using Windows Explorer), bringing up a context menu. Left click on the Properties Option caused display of information indicating that File Protocol was in effect and displayed the following.
  • file:///H:/Yorktown/August/040818a.htm
The above seems like a valid file reference, although I am not sure about the three slashes prior to H:/

Does anybody understand my description of the problem? If so, does anybody have an idea of what is wrong?

I am blaming XP Service pack 2 because it is the only major change made to my system. Prior to download and install of SP2, all worked as expected. Afterwards, I had the problem. Post Hoc, ergo proctor hoc is the only idea that occurs to me, but it is not really proof that SP2 is the culprit.