[SOLVED]Firefox, Vista Internet Shortcut Problem

[UPDATE 8/17/2010 - see below]
Recently, I have been having a lot of annoying problems calling up Firefox from a variety of programs. Like Windows Mail, when I click on an internet shortcut link, I get an annoying [and bogus] message like "Windows cannot find ...URL... Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again." Mozillazine at http://kb.mozillazine.org/Windows_error_opening_Internet_shortcut_or_local_HTML_file_-_Firefox suggests that a misbehaving plugin might be a reason for the problem and suggests eliminating one by one to figure out which one might be the culprit! This can take hours depending on how many plugins you have. I tried setting Internet Explorer as a default browser, which made the links in Windows Mail, etc, work, but I do not want Internet Explorer to be my default browser! So I switched back to Firefox to be my default browser and the problem reappeared again! I do have a workaround for this, but I would like to hear from YOU, if you have a similar problem or if you have a true solution. So here is my workaround.

Simple workaround:
  • EXIT FIREFOX
  • START FIREFOX IN SAFE MODE (ALL PLUGINGS WILL BE DISABLED)
  • EXIT FIREFOX
  • START FIREFOX NORMALLY
This makes my internet shortcuts from various programs such as Windows Mail, Xenu, and others work again, and I get the links show up in Firefox. So let me know if you have a true solution, better than that from Mozillazine. Thanks!

[UPDATE 8/17/2010] I found that: 1) The solution above is not permanent - I kind of suspected that 2) Just restaring Firefox in a regular normal mode helped as well. So definitely try that first. Any more permanent solutions, let me know in the comments. Thanks!

1 comment:

Disclosure said...

I have removed a bunch of extensions and plugins to isolate the ones that may be causing problems above. The problems still occur, and the workaround above still works. But the list of extensions and plugins is much shorter now. This is the list:

PLUGINS
shockwave flash
realplayer(tm) G2 LiveConnect-Enabled Plug-In
realplayer version plugin
realjukebox NS plugin
quickupload
quicktime plug-in
mozilla default plug-in
move media player
microsoft windows mdia player firefox plugin
logmein, inc. remote access components
java(tm) platform SE 6 U21
2007 microsoft office system

EXTENSIONS
aging tabs
amazonassist
case changer
greasemonkey
java console
logmein, inc remote access plugin
placescleaners
quickrestart
read it later
seoquake

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