1048026 - Firefox Incorrectly Reports That It Is Not The Default Browser in Windows 8.1

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Shell Integration, defect)

Description

[Jason]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/31.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20140716183446

Steps to reproduce:

1. Using an administrative Windows account, set Firefox as the default Web browser with all its defaults set.

2. While still using that user account, run these commands from an elevated command line.  These commands set default file associations for all new users:
dism /online /Export-DefaultAppAssociations:C:\PATH\TO\FILE.xml
dism /online /Import-DefaultAppAssociations:C:\PATH\TO\FILE.xml

3. Create a new Windows user account.

4. Login using that new Windows user account.

5. Open "Default Programs" in Windows.  Verify that Firefox is the default browser.  (It should be the default browser.)

5. Create a shortcut on the desktop to http://www.firefox.com.  Verify that the shortcut opens in Firefox upon double-clicking it.  (It should open in Firefox.)


Actual results:

When Firefox opens, the modal dialog box appears indicating that Firefox is not the default Web browser and asks the user if he/she would like to make Firefox the default browser.


Expected results:

The browser should not have prompted to make Firefox the default Web browser, as Firefox already has all of its defaults set.

Comment 1

[Xavier Delgado]

Perhaps you shall update to Fx 37. There would be no bug.

Comment 2

[Jason]

I have no idea.  I don't have time to test this at the moment, unfortunately.

We worked-around the issue by disabling the default-browser check, so it's hard to tell whether the actual issue has been fixed or not.

Comment 3

[Tony Fairbanks]

This is still a problem with Firefox 45 on Win 8.1, using the DISM method as described above.

Comment 4

[:Gijs (he/him)]

What are the contents of the exported DISM file as relating to Firefox ?

On my machine, I run Firefox part of an account that can elevate to admin (I get UAC prompts). Firefox is the default browser. Yet if I use:

Dism /online /Get-DefaultAppAssociations

then Firefox does not appear, and instead I see:

  <Association Identifier="http" ProgId="IE.HTTP" ApplicationName="Internet Explorer" />
  <Association Identifier="https" ProgId="IE.HTTPS" ApplicationName="Internet Explorer" />

and no associations at all for .htm/.html/.xhtml and so on.

Comment 5

[Adam Gashlin (he/him) [:agashlin] (ex-moco)]

I can't currently reproduce this on Windows 8.1 (build 9600) and Firefox 76.0.1. When I set the defaults as described with dism, a new user will see Firefox as the default from within Firefox. Perhaps this was fixed some time in the past several years.