Another Monday morning, another irritant. This time it’s one of those annoyances in Windows XP that should have been sorted out long ago: Setting a browser as your default browser is no piece of cake. Everything else Internet-related is, from the default editor you might want to use to how you want to handle calendar file. Just go to Internet Properties in your Control Panel. But setting a default browser is not there, mainly because the Internet Properties window is actually the options window for Internet Explorer. And what’s the point of allowing users to open IE, just so they can close it down forever?
Anyway, here’s an easy solution: SetBrowser, a small slice of freeware from PC-Tools that allows you to set more or less any browser you like as the default browser, or any individual protocol, and to test it. It works pretty well, although don’t have it running at the same time Internet Properties unless you want some weirdness to happen in the latter.
By the way, this didn’t fix the problem I was trying to solve, namely an error that keeps popping up when a program tries to launch Firefox (opening links is no problem; it just seems to cause a problem with certain functions, though I don’t know enough to be able to figure out what.) It happens, for example, when I try to open Chat History in Skype, even if Firefox is no longer my default browser. The error message is this:
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MOZILL~1.EXE – Entry Point Not Found
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The procedure entry point ??0nsCAutoString@@QAE@PBD@Z could not be located in the dynamic link library xpcom.dll.
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OK
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Anybody got any ideas? I assume it’s a glitch in a plug-in, but which one? And is there any easy way to isolate the problem?
Hi Jeremy,
if you have Win XP SP2, if you click on Programs, then to Set Program Access and Defaults. Expand on Custom, you should be able to see all the browsers installed on your PC.
You should also be able to select which one is available and used as your default browser.
cheers.
If you re-install the program it might work. I had the same problem with FF 1.0.3 and it worked fine after. I just installed over the old version and didn’t loose any plug-ins or extensions.
found your post on a search for the same question; also found a KB article at Mozillazine that answers it definitively (includes the Program Access & defaults mentioned above, + more)
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Setting_Your_Default_Browser