Solved Live Mesh has messed up my favorites - now .wlx files

Microsoft sent me an email about Live Mesh ending. Wasn't sure if I had used it so went to have a look. Found a link saying 'Turn off syncing for IE favorites' so I clicked it as I didn't want it. But it now seems like it had already started syncing automatically since about half my favorites have changed to a xxxxxx.URL.wlx format which doesn't open anything! I understand this is a temporary file type created by sync not completing.
Have I lost these favorites or is there a way of recovering?
I use Xmarks for syncing favorites so will a forced overwrite from their server restore them?
Thanks for any ideas.

do the xmarks export,
taken from the xmarks manual...

1. Go to my.xmarks.com.
2. Select "Tools" in the menu bar.
3. Select "Explore & Restore Old Bookmarks".
4. Xmarks will display all your backed up bookmark sets.
5. Select the bookmark set that you wish to export.
6. Click "Export".
7. Select the program in which you would like to open the file or save the file.

Click to expand...

that should fix it, ive used xmarks for years and i dont get why more people dont.

Thanks Boohbah, found it but still a problem.
Restored a previous set which it has done OK on MyXmarks but I can't get them into IE.
It said they'd restore on PC at next sync but they haven't.
Tried 'Export', got a IE page with a list of them but I don't know what to do with it.
It didn't offer me any options.
Do I have to close MyXmarks and/or IE before it will work?

sorry for the delay, xmarks usually for me syncs at opening and closing the browser.
i use firefox so im not familiar with how xmarks performs with IE,
in firefox i go to addons and select xmarks, there opens a window with the xmarks settings and options, one of them is to restore,
im guessing that if you go to manage add ons in IE you may get a similar settings option.

Just can't get it to work! I have restored a good version on MyXmarks.com and then asked Xmarks on the desktop to force download from the server. But the bad ones still remain in favorites. Xmarks syncs ok on IE shutdown but, of course, it just syncs all the bad ones back to the web.
The only other thing I can think of doing now is to actually delete all my bookmarks and then force download a good set from the Xmarks server.
I'm out of the UK for a few weeks now so unfortunately it will have to wait.
On my PC here I made sure the server version was good before signing into Xmarks on the desktop. So syncing on this PC should be fine. (The UK PC is switched off).
I am quite angry with Microsoft Live mesh for creating this mess.
Thanks for your help, I will update the thread when I'm back in UK.

no worries, at least you have a working set.

Here's an update as promised, the problem is sorted.
When back at my UK PC I tried again to force download from the Xmarks site but the dud bookmarks remained, all named (bookmark).url.wlx
I had to resort to deleting them one by one, or whole folders if all were dud, via 'Organise Favorites'.
Whilst doing this I realised that some were very old favourites and/or folders that I had since deleted, renamed or re-organised and others were duplicates of the good versions.
I think somehow my favourites had got on to Live Mesh, although I don't recall ever doing it, and when I connected to it they were all sent back to me somehow.
Clicking on them didn't get the website, it just returned an error message so they were useless anyhow.
I suspect now that Xmarks was syncing the good favorites correctly and not really touching the dud ones.
Anyway, all seems to be OK now.
But it lots of black marks to Microsoft Live Mesh.

P.S. Anybody know if we can delete the WLSync.exe program when Live Mesh goes defunct or even before?
Is it needed for any other process now or in future?