diff --git a/Lib/test/test_urllib2.py b/Lib/test/test_urllib2.py
index c911c9d2c07..3f781988f5a 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_urllib2.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_urllib2.py
@@ -681,7 +681,7 @@ class HandlerTests(unittest.TestCase):
                 try:
                     data = r.read()
                     headers = r.info()
-                    newurl = r.geturl()
+                    respurl = r.geturl()
                 finally:
                     r.close()
                 stats = os.stat(TESTFN)
@@ -692,6 +692,7 @@ class HandlerTests(unittest.TestCase):
             self.assertEqual(headers["Content-type"], "text/plain")
             self.assertEqual(headers["Content-length"], "13")
             self.assertEqual(headers["Last-modified"], modified)
+            self.assertEqual(respurl, url)
 
         for url in [
             "file://localhost:80%s" % urlpath,
diff --git a/Lib/urllib2.py b/Lib/urllib2.py
index b416913f492..58ef6255874 100644
--- a/Lib/urllib2.py
+++ b/Lib/urllib2.py
@@ -1288,7 +1288,7 @@ class FileHandler(BaseHandler):
             if not host or \
                 (not port and socket.gethostbyname(host) in self.get_names()):
                 return addinfourl(open(localfile, 'rb'),
-                                  headers, 'file:'+file)
+                                  headers, 'file://'+ host + file)
         except OSError, msg:
             # urllib2 users shouldn't expect OSErrors coming from urlopen()
             raise URLError(msg)