295196 - windowsupdate.microsoft.com inaccessible with Firefox.

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 28321

(Firefox :: Shell Integration, defect)

Description

[Stephen Lee]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-GB; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-GB; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4

Just recently got round to upgrading from Internet Explorer to Firefox. Ideally
I would like to ditch IE, but cannot do so, with the main reason so far being
because Firefox is unable to run the checks for Windows Update.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Select the "Windows Update" option from the start menu.
2. Observe that this opens Internet Explorer, and attempt to use Firefox instead
3. Navigate to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com
(actually only Step 3 is necessary to reproduce the problem)
Actual Results:  
An error page starting:

Thank you for your interest in Windows Update

Windows Update is the online extension of Windows that helps you get the most
out of your computer.

You need to be running a version of Internet Explorer 5 or higher in order to
use Windows Update.

Expected Results:  
Firefox should access the windowsupdate site in such a way that this important
OS function can be implemented without using Internet Explorer.

Furthermore, step 1 should cause Firefox to open rather than Internet Explorer.

This seems a major problem preventing me from using Firefox exclusively on a
Windows OS, since this is the main route by which important security updates are
distributed.

Comment 1

[Dave Townsend [:mossop] (PTO until Aug 21st)]

Windowsupdate requires the browser to support ActiveX controls, something that
firefox will never do due to security concerns.

This is likely to be a WONTFIX

Comment 2

[Jaime Mitchell (use [e-mail] for email)]

Reporter please search for existing bugs before filling.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 91210 ***

Comment 3

[Stephen Lee]

I did search for existing bugs... there seemed to be nothing relevant using a
search for [ windows update ] in the bugzilla helper.

Comment 4

[Stephen Lee]

V. DUPE

Comment 5

[Stephen Lee]

Hmmm... too hasty to V. DUPE - it's actually a dupe of a different bug (now I've
searched WONTFIX etc. bugs too)...

Comment 6

[Stephen Lee]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 28321 ***