Solved Favorites List Empty in IE8

[uccmin51]

I am running windows 7 Home Premium, ie 8 Version 8.0.7601.17514. My favorites are in Users/Owner and contains all the shortcuts. However when in ie, favorites are empty.

Created a new user, deleted links and favorites from Owner and copied links and favorites from New User to Owner. Still nothing.

Did reverse, copied Links and Favorites that were in Owner to New User, and they appear under New User!

Is there link broken or corrupted file on Owner?

 

[Brink]

Hello uccmin51, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Using Option Two in the tutorial below, verify that your C:\Users\(user-name)\Favorites and C:\Users\(user-name)\Links folders are set to this default location.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/18583-user-folders-restore-default-location.html

 

[uccmin51]

Hi Brink, Thanks for your reply. I'm not sure I understand which profile you want me to check. I am Users/Owner and my favorites and links file are there. The shortcuts are in favorites when I expand the folder. I created another user Users/Temp Acct to try another fix I read -- to create another user and copy that favorites and links folder to my file. I copied Users/Temp Acct favorites and links to Users/Owner but nothing changed.

Then I copied the original Users/Owner favorites and links to the new user Users/Temp Acct and my favorites worked.

It seems to me that in Users/Owner IE is looking in the wrong place for the links/favorites files. They are where they are supposed to be and work when moved to another user. Is this what your suggestion will check? I'm afraid I'm not an advanced user and don't want to do anything I don't need to. It looks like method 2 is for new user accounts -- do you want me to do this on my old Users/Owner account?

 

[Brink]

Sorry, I had the wrong link posted.

You would want to use OPTION TWO in this tutorial instead.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/18583-user-folders-restore-default-location.html
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Check while logged in the Users/Owner account for it's Favorites folder.

Favorites in IE are stored in the C:\Users\Owner\Favorites folder. I only mentioned to check the C:\Users\Owner\Links folder since it was mentioned and may have been changed as well.

 

[uccmin51]

Hi Again,

In the registry I corrected the address for favorites and links which were wrong. Compared to my desktop and all settings are now the same. Still does not work. Exported bookmarks.htm file on the new user. Copied that to old users document library. Both accounts now have same link, favorites, bookmark. New user works, old one still doesn't. On old Users\Owner I cannot import bookmarks. The destination folder is blank, nothing to select. Any more suggestions?

 

[uccmin51]

I fixed it! Decided to poke around registry a little more and found folder
Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\User Shell Folders and saw the settings for links and favorites were changed like the Shell Folders. Corrected them and now my favorites are back! What a learning process!

 

[Brink]

That's great news uccmin51. I'm happy to hear that you got it sorted.