I have tried to make a robots.txt file but it won't validate. My main reason is because the site has some pages that are afilliate links and I read that google looks at them as portals.
In any event, I first wrote the file myself with first line being the User-agent: * line, which returned syntax errors at http://tool.motoricerca.info/robots-checker.phtml Then I used a generator which generated the file exactly like the one created with the first line # robots.text file created by. . . And that too returned syntax eroors for that first line. So i ended up with this:

# My robots.txt file
User-agent: *
Disallow: /Merchandise.html/
Disallow: /iTunes.html/
Disallow: /Mall.html/
Disallow: /Mall_2.html/

Which again returnded the first line error. What is wrong?

http://www.satinstyle.net

I think you might just need to remove the trailing slash since you're trying to disallow specific files and not folders. Are you using a text editor to create the file to make sure there are no extra characters in the file?

You don't need that first line. It's just a comment so it's safe to remove it.

Example:

Analyzing file

http://multifinanceit.com/robots.txt

No errors found in this robots.txt file

Look at that file.

I believe I shoukd not have it a validator- the above tool is an analyzer. When I take out the first line the User-agent returns an error. The (/) at the end passes the analyzer.
I took out both the final (/) and the first line.
so now:

User-agent: *
This line doesn't follow a correct syntax. The correct syntax is: <field>:<optionalspace><value><optionalspace> , where "field" can be "User-agent" or "Disallow". Please refer to Robots Exclusion Standard page for more informations.

Regardless of what is in the first line, this is the same error message. However, without another first line the rest of the script brings back errors - no valid User-agent

Delete your robots.txt file.
and
Try to use note pad to create your new robots.txt

I used notepad That is what the file is on now.

It looks like all the errors you're getting are coming from those extra characters at the beginning of the User-agent line. For whatever reason they somehow got into the file. It might be easiest to just delete the file and upload a new one. Don't use the one you have now and write a new robots.txt file in notepad.

If you're still seeing the same error those characters might be getting added when you're FTPing to the server. How are you uplaoding the file?

I did that. I still get those characters in the analysis. I have been using both Dreamweaver 8 and Core FTP Lite. This is very frustrating.

It might be in the way the programs are uploading the file to the server. I'm not sure where it would be in either program, but look for the settings about the program sends file through FTP. The choices should be to upload in either binary or ascii format (and maybe an option to automaticlly decide). Make sure to upload the file with the binary option since the ascii option can sometimes add the extra characters.

Hopefully that will work, but if not I'll see if I can think of something else that might work.

It works now. The poblem was in the encoding. The notepad.txt was encoded UTF-8. When I changed it to ANSI it didn't add the extra characters.

Thanks for your help!

Glad you got it all worked out. I hadn't even thought to check that, but it's good to know if anyone has the problem in the future.