Problem trying to validate an HTML document that is on my hard drive. Can it be done?

From: Lilla Renfro Slater (lilla@earthlink.net)
Date: Sat, Feb 26 2000


Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 19:27:44 -0500 (EST)
Message-ID: <000501bf80b9$6b010fc0$79cc173f@dell300>
From: "Lilla Renfro Slater" <lilla@earthlink.net>
To: <www-validator@w3.org>
Subject: Problem trying to validate an HTML document that is on my hard drive. Can it be done? 

I am trying to use the VALIDATE BY URI option to validate an HTML documents
on my hard drive, but it gives me an error message as explained below.

I am using Win98 with IE5.01 and in case it matters: Earthlink which has an
apache server, but that's probably not relevant here as the document is on
my hard drive.

the error I get from w3c validator page is this:

    unexpected response when trying to retrieve
     file:///D:/MyWebDev/earthlink/lilla/webdocs/html/Start.html:

    404 File `///D:/MyWebDev/earthlink/lilla/webdocs/html/Start.html' does
not exist
    Please make sure you have entered the URI correctly.

I tried enter other variations like the one below, but just get error
messages:
    http://file:///d:\MyWebDev\earthlink\lilla\webdocs\html\Start.html

Can I do this, if so, can you give me a hand with the syntax please?

Thank you, Lilla
lilla@earthlink.net