Links in Word cannot open browser

[Roger Fink]

Firefox 18.0.1 is my default browser on Win7-32. When I click a
hyperlink in a Word document (Word 2000) and Firefox is closed, the
browser will not launch. If Firefox is already open however, it will
bring up the page normally.

I think this is a Firefox problem because when I switch to IE10 as the
default browser, the link in Word launches IE.

Any ideas on how to correct this?

[Roger Fink]

Fixed, at least for now. I made SeaMonkey the default browser to see if
links in a Word doc could open it. They can. When I switched back to
Firefox, the link behavior carried over. Doesn't seem logical, but
that's the best description I can provide of what happened.

[Gabor]

It may have been just switching to _any_ other browser that fixed
the issue. I've seen this in Windows XP, and even switching to
IE and back fixes it. It's as if Windows default browser can point
to nothing at all even though it shows as FireFox.

--
Gabor

[Roger Fink]

Since I last posted I've gone back and re-investigated this, since I
couldn't replicate the "good" behavior today that I experienced
yesterday. I clicked a link in a Word doc that was on the desktop, and
no browser launched. I closed the Word file, but I noticed that the
typical ghost file/icon that appears along side the original file/icon
didn't close with it, which is not normal, so I opened it and there was
a message to insert the Office 2000 SP-1 disk to install this
capability. I did that and things are OK now, although the exercise also
played havoc with the start menu and I had to do a registry restore
(thank you Erunt) to get it back.

O2K can be successfully installed on Win7 but given what you said, this
sounds like the Bad Old Microsoft up to no good. It amazes me that what
I had to go back to the disk to install wasn't installed by default.




>

[Roger Fink]

For the record, since I inserted the O2k disk, as the Microsoft screen
message said to do as a fix to launch a default browser other than IE
from Word, I have had two BSODs. My conclusion: don't try this at home,
but if you must, then only in the presence of an adult who has an IT
job. In typical Windows fashion, one moment you're cruising down the
Interstate and the next moment you're walking a tightrope across the
Grand Canyon. I haven't had this much fun since Windows 98.

FWIW, I was lucky enough to have created a restore point about a day and
a half ago (since Win7 creates very few of them). Thus far the revert
seems to have fixed things but it's really too early to tell for sure.
Oddly enough, it apparently didn't wipe out the upgrade off of the O2K
disc because the default browser launch "feature" continues to work.