Firefox 2 Refuses to be Default Browser After Uninstalling Firefox 3 Beta - Problem & Solution

Problem

Recently I installed Firefox 3 Beta application on my Vista Laptop. It was nice playing with Firefox 3 new features but I could not continue using it as most of the Firefox Add-ons  are not yet supported on version 3.0 beta. So I uninstalled Firefox 3 beta application.

After Firefox 3.0 uninstall, to my surprise I noticed that it is not able to set Firefox 2.0 as default browser. Even though I try to set Firefox as the default browser, it is automatically reset to Internet Explorer.

When I try to click web page links on applications like Word, Outlook, GTalk, Skype, etc..IE displays the web page.

I had a terrible browsing experience(sorry IE guys, I love Microsoft but not Internet Explorer) for 2 days as I was not able to set Firefox as default  browser.

Solution

My search on the Internet for tips to solve the problem proven vain. The only option left to me is to override the installation of Firefox 2 by downloading latest version of Firefox 2. I tried the final option and luckily It worked.

I've chosen to override Firefox 2.0 installation instead of uninstall and then install process. It is to make sure that I'm not going to loose any of Firefox bookmarks, add-ons & other settings.

Now I'm back to happy browsing with Firefox. Hope this post is going to be useful to someone who is facing the similar problem.

If you are already a Firefox user you may be interested to check our useful Firefox Tips & Tricks. If you are not using Firefox, then I would say that you are missing a lot.