Can't save Internet Explorer favorites to a NetWare NSS volume

Users receive "Unable to create 'website name':” error when attempting to add a new favorite with Internet Explorer 6.

It appears to be a confluence of factors to cause this issue:

1. Internet Explorer (version 6 for this scenario, but it apparently affects version 7 also) expects "instant" access when writing a Favorite file (since we redirect that folder to the Home Directory on the server, client/server latency/locking suddenly becomes a concern).

2. The Kaspersky anti-virus scanner holds the new .url file open just long enough to cause problems – Internet Explorer (or IE) then splits the file into two broken parts and notifies the user about a process blocking it, when in reality it is the server holding up the process.

3. Part of the problem is that the PC access is "too fast" - test boxes when under a load that slows down the browser, never has a problem because IE is delayed on the write attempt.

The customer added policy exclusions to the Kaspersky anti-virus software on the server. The exclusion policy used a wildcard URL file extension (*.URL) to allow favorites to be saved to the NetWare server.

IE Favorites are redirected to the user’s home directory located on a NetWare server's NSS volume.

Specifically when a user tries to add a new favorite in IE 6, they get:

"Unable to create 'website name': The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process. [OK]” as an error dialog.

Note: IE 7 produces a slightly different error wording, just saying it's an "Unspecified error".

After they click OK, there will be two slightly different entries created in their Favorites folder, neither of which works.

For example, if I save Google's home page as a favorite, after the error, there are two new entries in Favorites: one called "Google" and a second called "google.com-" (with the dash at the end). The ‘dashed URL’ Favorite created will match the URL that was being saved.

Double-clicking either generated shortcut will result in the message:

"The target "" of this Internet Shortcut is not valid. Go to the Internet Shortcut property sheet and make sure the target is correct."

In looking at the properties of either Shortcut file in Windows Explorer the Web Document tab for the file will not be present.