254881 - "The connection was refused when attempting to contact..." error on launching Firefox via third-party hyperlink

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 255006

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Pete Dumont]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040803 Firefox/0.9.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040803 Firefox/0.9.3

When Firefox is set as the default web browser, and is launched via a hyperlink
in MS Word, I get the above error message *twice*, as it seems to try and open
two separate instances of the web page. I only get the error if Firefox is not
already running.
If Firefox is running, and I click the Word hyperlink, the web site launches OK,
however I also get *two* instances of it launching. I have noticed this
behaviour with Firefox 0.9.2 and 0.9.3, and it does *not* happen when I set my
default browser to Opera or IE.
I have been able to reproduce this on a number of different web pages, the URL
seems to be irrelevant. Examples: http://www.google.com,
http://www.voyages-sncf.com/.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create a Word document (either Word 2000 or Word XP will do).
2. Insert a hyperlink into the document.
3. Ensure Firefox is not already loaded, and is your default browser.
4. Click on the Word hyperlink.

Actual Results:  
*Two* separate Firefox windows will launch, each with the above error message
(i.e. "The connection was refused when attempting to contact <Website URL>").

Expected Results:  
Launched one Firefox window displaying the relevant website.

I have only tried to reproduce this within Word 2000 and XP, but it may well be
reproducible via hyperlinks in other applications.

Comment 1

[PikeUK]

Opening two windows from external links is Bug 246078, I'm not sure if the
"connection refused" problem is part of that bug or not.

Perhaps you could try the workaround listed below and then see if you still get
"connection refused" when clicking links in Word:

http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/firefox_bug_246078.asp

Comment 2

[Pete Dumont]

Thanks - that has solved the "two windows" problem. The HKCU hive still had /
ddeexec/Application/IExplore in the four keys listed. It now opens only one 
window.
Bad news, however, is that it still gives me the "Connection was refused" 
message if I start via an external hyperlink if Firefox isn't already running; I 
just get the one error now rather than two. I suspect this is a timing issue. We 
are going out via a proxy farm and we're using a PROXY.PAC file to pick up the 
proxy settings. I suspect that Firefox is trying to contact the website before 
the proxy.pac has fully loaded, which is why it only happens if Firefox isn't 
already running. This would appear to be confirmed by the fact that if I 
explicitly list each proxy server in the browser settings, I don't get the 
error. If I revert to using the proxy.pac file, I get the error again.
I can list the contents of this file if you like, but a work around may be to 
increase the delay between browser startup and when the browser first tries to 
contact the website, if there is any way of doing this via the config files.
Thanks for your quick response BTW.

Comment 3

[PikeUK]

The proxy thing has been reported separately as Bug 255006 so I'm going to mark
this as a duplicate of that bug (normally I'd mark the newer bug a duplicate of
the older, but because this bug was caused by two separate problems it confuses
the issue).

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 255006 ***