Vista RC1, Hyperlink problems and You still got to reboot for a small change in system setting!

Got Vista RC1, Installed and got it to work. It much better than the Beta release. I like it better than XP but I still got my reservations.
I also installed the Office Suite 2007 and the integration is super. I could integrate outlook with Share Point server and find some gems that I did not have with XP + Outlook 2003 combination. I like the office 2007 in general.
everything worked fine for a few days! And suddenly links from within outlook stopped working. Tried some changes did not work. What did I do to break Vista behavior? None! I was just using the system. Oh wait I did install Firefox! And it works.
I gave up on solving it until I landed on sunbelt blog. I went there for another reason, to get info on VML Zero day exploit that is the exploit of the day now. But I stumbled on to " Sunbelt Weekly TechTips" and there was the solution for my problem. Apparently he/she too had the same problem and has a solution for it;

How to fix hyperlink problem in Vista RC1/Office 2007
I installed Vista RC1 on my computer and installed Office 2007 beta. For the first few days, everything worked fine, but now I can't open links in Outlook email messages or in Word documents. When I click on a link, I get a message that says "The operation has been canceled due to restrictions on this computer. See your system administrator." Of course, I am my system administrator (and yes, I was logged on with an admin account).

Based on recent mail, I'm not the only one who had this problem. It seems that sometime after those "first few days," I installed Firefox. That's when my links stopped working, and after much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, I found out the solution. Even if you have IE set as your default browser, installing Firefox changes your default program settings. You'd think you could just go into IE's options and select it as your default browser, but that doesn't work. Here's what does:

1. Click Start | Control Panel.
2. If Control Panel is in Classic View, click Control Panel Home in the left pane to put it back in Vista default view.
3. Click Programs | Default Programs
4. Click Set Program Access and Computer Defaults
5. Click Yes to continue or enter admin credentials when prompted.
6. Click the little down arrow for Custom.
7. Under "Choose a default web browser," click Internet Explorer, and check "Enable access to this program."
8. Click OK.
You'll have to reboot the computer to apply the change. Now your links in Outlook and Word should work again.


Thanks Sunbelt

Tags: VISTA RC1, Office 2007, VML exploit, hyperlink problem