Outlook 2002 on XP: Clicking embedded internet links opens 2 wind

[moorebs]

Hi,
One day my Outlook started acting funny. When I clicked on an internet
link from an email, it would run an exe. After taking quite a bit of time
looking at it, there was a registry setting that was pointing to an exe file
(a epson installer as it turns out).

The registry setting was :
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Outlook\Preferences\InternetBrowserPath
and the value was set to this exe I mentioned. Can't find much on this
setting, nor any place to set it other than the registry.

My other computers don't appear to have this key. So - I deleted the key.
When I next went in and tried again, it then asked me for a location, and I
pointed it to IE. The registry preference above re-appeared with the IE path
this time.

Now what happens is that when I click on a link within an email, 2 IE
windows open. One points to the link that I wanted, the other opens what
appears to be a blank window (saying "connecting" near the top, but not doing
anything).

I have reset my default internet browser, and have checked my URL related
file type associations (which appear to be correct).

Help? Cannot figure out how to get rid of the 2nd window, and/or reset
Outlook preferences back to default or basically get things back to normal.
Also would be interested if someone could tell me what likely happened in the
first place.

Thanks in Advance,
Becky

 

[Roady [MVP]]

That key is used when the default browser is not properly registered in
Windows. This usually happens after you uninstall an additional browser.
Remove that key and use Start-> Set Program Access and Defaults to set it
back to Internet Explorer and try again.

 

[moorebs]

Thank you Robert,
I wanted to clarify that I tried both of those things before, albeit
independently. Neither fixed it - do you think I'll get a better result by
doing both together?

Also, no new or other browsers are installed that I know of - unless you
count Citrix. I certainly haven't downloaded any or removed anything like
that (intentionally anyway)....

All the internet browser references I could find show IE.....

Thanks,
Becky

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Doing both at the same time might help indeed.
Which version of Internet Explorer are you using?