http links do not work from Outlook 2003 to IE7

[Clementius]

Hi,
I am running Office 2003 on Vista Business. Starting a few weeks ago, when I
click on a html link in Outlook 2003, Internet Explorer opens but stays on
the home page. If I copy and paste the link to another application like
Winword, and click it, IE goes to the right site. I installed Chrome
temporarily and it works fine with Chrome from Outlook. I reset Internet
explorer to its default settings and made sure it was set as the default
browser in Windows. I also upgraded from IE7 to IE8 but nothing has helped
so far. I'd like to keep using Internet browser as the only browser on my
machine.
Any suggestions?
Thank you.

 

[Clementius]

I was able to fix the issue by doing the following:
Go to Control Panel | Default Programs
Click Set your default programs
Highlight Microsoft Office Outlook and click Choose Defaults for this
program
Make sure that the MAILTO protocol is checked and set to Microsoft Office
Outlook.
In my case, it was un-checked.