- // Posted on Jan 8, 2008 by
Danny
-
Comments (3)
Setting your default browser should be a rather simple task in both Windows XP & Vista. Just right-click on the "Start" menu, choose "Properties", click the "Start Menu" tab and "Customize". You are presented with a handy dropdown menu that allows you to choose between the different installed web browsers on your machine.
That's all she wrote, right? Well, not if you have installed Opera, or at least the latest Opera Beta (9.50b). I have installed this beta on both my XP (Pro) and Vista (Ultimate 32-Bit) machine and experienced the same issue where I cannot set anything but Opera as my default browser, even after it has been uninstalled. My first step was to go to the dropdown mentioned above and select a different browser, but after that did not work I started to explore a bit. (FYI - For the sake of this example I will be using screenshots from my XP Machine). My next step was to verify that I uninstalled the Opera 9.50 Beta. As you can see in the screenshot below there the Opera installation does not show up in my Add/Remove Programs list (and yes, it did after being installed):
I went back to the default browser dropdown list and saw that Opera still shows up in the list!
So what is the impact of this issue? Well, every time I click on a link outside of a browser (e.g. in an email from Outlook) I get the following error message since Windows cannot find the Opera (since I uninstalled the program ), which is set as the "default browser"
Windows Vista Solution
If you are not comfortable or familiar with editing the registry then do not continue. The Vista fix is the easier of the two since it requires only two registry changes. You will need to edit the following registry settings:
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Associations\UrlAssociat ions\http\UserChoice
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Associations\UrlAssociat ions\https\UserChoice
Update the "Progid" key to "IE.HTTP" for Internet Explorer or "Firefox.Url" for Firefox. That's it! No restart is required, the next time you open links the browser you specified will be utilized.
Windows XP Solution
Unfortunately this solution is a little more detailed. As I mentioned in the Vista solution, if you are not comfortable or familiar with editing your computer's registry then do not continue. You will need to edit the following registry settings (Note: HKLM = HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, substitute the italicized values with the browser settings of your choice - IE is included below):
- HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\.htm=%DefaultBrowserClass%
- HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\.html=%DefaultBrowserClass%
- HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\HTTP\shell\open\command=%DefaultBrowserCommand%
- HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\HTTP\shell\open\ddeexec=%DefaultBrowserDDEExec%
- HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\HTTP\shell\open\ddeexec\Application=%DefaultBrowserApplication%
- HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\https\shell\open\command=%DefaultBrowserCommand%
- HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\https\shell\open\ddeexec=%DefaultBrowserDDEExec%
- HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\https\shell\open\ddeexec\Application=%DefaultBrowserApplication%
The following setting substitutions for the registry keys listed above will reset your default browser to Internet Explorer:
%DefaultBrowserApplication%=IExplore
%DefaultBrowserClass%=htmlfile
%DefaultBrowserCommand%="C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" -nohome
%DefaultBrowserDDEExec%="%1",,-1,0,,,,
The lesson learned here is stick with Internet Explorer/Firefox, or at least a stable version of Opera. I have experimented with the Firefox 3 Beta for a short period of time and have been impressed so far (minus the occasional and expected beta-bugs). At the very least it is a LOT faster than firefox 2.x. Hope this helps.
[dnk:http://www.dannydouglass.com/post.aspx?id=0a59d087-3da3-484a-8586-733c44b8e861]
$DNK$