Setting file protocols in Windows
Last week I re-installed Firefox from the German version to the English version and suddenly all my file associations were gone. This was a big deal for me as I do a lot of networking and negotiations over instant messaging programs and this involves clicking on a lot of weblinks. Suddenly, whenever I clicked on a weblink sent to me via IM, Pidgin was coming out with the error message :
“FIREFOX DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO OPEN THIS ADDRESS BECAUSE THE PROTOCOL ISN’T ASSOCIATED WITH ANY PROGRAM”
So basically it was telling me that it didn’t know how to open a weblink because I hadn’t specified that Firefox was to be used to open URL’s.
This was a big problem that took me over a week to figure out and today I finally solved it. Which is just as well because I was about to blow a gasket. I wasn’t sure if it was Firefox’s fault (requiring a change to the “about:config” page), a problem with Pidgin or a problem with Windows. Since the problems started when I re-installed Firefox, I was inclined to think that it was Firefox causing the problems. But it seems now that the offender was Windows!
What you have to do to fix this issue is change the Windows registry to let it know what you want done with weblinks. So open up a text editor and type in the following :
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http]
@=”URL:http Protocol”
“URL Protocol”=”"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\open]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\open\command]
@=”\”I:\\Programme\\Mozilla Firefox\\firefox.exe\” \”%1\”"
Save the file as protocol.reg to your desktop. But make sure that you first change the path to your browser. My Firefox browser is at “I:\\Programme\\Mozilla Firefox\\firefox.exe\ but yours may be somewhere totally different. You may also use a different browser altogether. So make sure that last line corresponds to where the default browser is located on your PC.
Once you have the “protocol.reg” file on your desktop, double-click on it, say yes to the boxes that pop up and the necessary changes will be made to your registry. You should now be able to open weblinks with Firefox.
The above script is also the one to use if you want to set a particular action with a particular program. So if you have a preferred program for opening photos for example, you would replace the http with say jpg and the last line would contain the path to your preferred program.
If you’re not entirely sure what you’re doing though, I strongly recommend you make a backup of the registry before changing anything. If you totally mess up your registry without a backup to save you then you’re totally screwed.
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