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After install, Firefox sets itself as default to open all kinds of files. How do I prevent this. I don't want it as default for anything except browser.

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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For example, after install of most recent version 32.0.1 Firefox logo was attached to all my pdf files. I only want to firefox as a browser, not to open videos, pics or pdf's. I went to default program option in start menu but there are so many file types I don't know what should be opening. I simply deleted firefox and everything went back to normal.

For example, after install of most recent version 32.0.1 Firefox logo was attached to all my pdf files. I only want to firefox as a browser, not to open videos, pics or pdf's. I went to default program option in start menu but there are so many file types I don't know what should be opening. I simply deleted firefox and everything went back to normal.

All Replies (3)

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Sorry, Firefox is supposed to be an additional PDF viewer, and not make itself the default. The installer is glitching on some systems.

You can try this fix suggested by a user in another thread:

  1. Open Adobe Reader / Acrobat
  2. Edit->Preferences
  3. In the Categories column click 'General'
  4. Near the bottom of the page click the button marked 'Select Default PDF Handler'
  5. In the dialog, select 'Adobe Reader XI' (or Adobe Acrobat, as the case may be) and click 'Apply'
  6. A Windows Configuration screen will appear. Allow it to do its stuff (takes a few minutes), then restart your computer when prompted.

Does that work for you?

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Or if you reinstall Firefox, decline the option to make it the default browser. You can use it as a secondary browser.

Full installers are available here: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/

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Note that this would possibly only happen when Firefox is set as the default browser and only should happen if there isn't another application set to handle these file type. Firefox inspects some registry keys to check that and if a program is registered via other registry keys then Firefox may think that there isn't a program to handle these content types.

You can use the registry editor to check some keys.

  • Registry Editor:
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\.pdf\
    HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.pdf

Remove the FirefoxHTML value of the Default key and leave an empty value of that key. That should allow you to set another application as the default to handle PDF files via the open with dialog.