Why is the finger pointing but not opening!

December 6, 2006 3:04 PM

[Fixmumscomputerfilter] I recently upgraded my mum to firefox 2.0. And now she cant open links from outlook express. Theres

So I installed Firefox 2.0 on my mums computer. All is good! she likes the spell check. However yesterday she came to me with this problem. She cannot open any links from mail within outlook express. The cursor turns to the pointing finger but nothing happens when you click on it. I made sure Firefox was set as the default browser but its made no difference.

Now I would tell her to use thunderbird. But she uses outlook express to sync with her hotmail account. Can thunderbird do this?

She is running XP home. And as far as I can tell no viruses or malware is present.

So. How do I fix this and remain the good son? Any Ideas?

Thanks MeFites...

posted by gergtreble to computers & internet (11 comments total)

This looks possibly related. Did she recently install ie7?
posted by null terminated at 3:12 PM on December 6, 2006

As I do not have a Hotmail account, I have not tried this, but it seems like an answer to your first question.
posted by Partial Law at 3:36 PM on December 6, 2006

As far as I know she doesn't have IE 7 on her computer, although she does update it regularly. So its possible it sneaked on there without me noticing. Is there a way to remove it?

Partial law! You may have solved the "using outlook express" problem. I may well be geting my mom onto thunderbird now...
posted by gergtreble at 3:49 PM on December 6, 2006

I believe IE 7 recently became an official update. You may be able to uninstall it from the add/remove programs menu. What's strange is that this happened after installing Firefox 2 and not after installing IE 7, if that happened. It's worth a shot though.
posted by null terminated at 4:04 PM on December 6, 2006

Then that is my first step. Ill check and find out if IE 7 got installed then.
posted by gergtreble at 4:24 PM on December 6, 2006

IE7 has probably come in via automatic updates, and it's almost certain to have tried to make itself the default browser and screwed something up. Just try using Set Program Access and Defaults to choose Firefox as the default browser again, before doing anything more drastic.
posted by flabdablet at 6:14 PM on December 6, 2006

As a datapoint ...

I installed Firefox 2 at some point in the last week or two. Can't remember. I had no problem with Outlook (not Express, just regular Outlook). On Tuesday, I got a notice that IE7 was going to automatically update. I figured "why not." After that installation / update finished, I had the same problem with Outlook that your mom is having. I'm guessing she got a popup / notice asking her if she wanted to upgrade, and she (naturally) just clicked on "okay."

And Microsoft wonders why people hate their products.
posted by Alt F4 at 8:05 PM on December 6, 2006

Note: I'm not known for my great memory, so I could be misremembering the situation. But I'm still blaming IE7.
posted by Alt F4 at 8:08 PM on December 6, 2006

Alt F4: did you manage to fix it? If so, how?
posted by gergtreble at 8:54 PM on December 6, 2006

I did notice that you said you already made sure that Firefox is the default browser; but did you actually use Set Program Access and Defaults to do that? I've occasionally seen that fix more things than simply ticking "yes" when Firefox asks if it should become the default browser.
posted by flabdablet at 3:11 AM on December 7, 2006

gergtreble -

I'm actually home, sick, today, and that was all on my computer at work. My brain was in such a fog yesterday, that I can't remember if I got it working or not.

I'll try to post an update when I'm back in the office. If it isn't working, I'm going to go through the Set Program Access steps recommended here. Hopefully that'll do it.
posted by Alt F4 at 4:47 PM on December 7, 2006