(1) Does it make any difference whether Firefox is already open or whether it needs to launch from scratch?

(2) Do you use any special startup procedures for Firefox (e.g., sandboxing software, the no-remote command line switch, etc.)?

(3) Could you check whether you have any "non-default" settings for the following preferences and test with the default settings.

(i) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(ii) In the filter box, type or paste tabs.load and pause while the list is filtered

(iii) If any of these appear in bold, you can double-click to reset them to default (or right-click and choose Reset):

• browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground (probably most relevant)
• browser.tabs.loadInBackground
• browser.tabs.loadBookmarksInBackground (probably not relevant)

You might need to exit and restart Firefox for this to take effect.

(4) Probably won't affect this issue one way or the other, but Firefox is now up to version 17.0.1, which includes some security fixes.

You can also check for problems caused by DDE:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Windows_error_opening_Internet_shortcut_or_local_HTML_file_-_Firefox

Thanks jscher2000 that's solution #796 for you! It turns out that I had to reset "browser.tabs.loadinBackground" and it worked fine. I tested it with a bunch of unknown websites, that weren't in my cache and it worked good. Again thanks, i never would have found this solution since I have "enough knowledge to be dangerous!"

Thank you for reporting back. This is a very mysterious interaction and it's useful to have as much input as possible.

Did you check if there are DDE registry keys present?

Because if it happens with a link in an external program then it is possible that Firefox receives the links via both interfaces and in such a case loading in the background might have this additional unwanted side effect.

co-rel Thanks for your input. I did check regedit for DDE and discovered that there are a "slug" of DDE entries! They seem to be associated with Office 14 which I assume is the programs used on Sky Drive? Given that those files have been around for sometime now and the Firefox glitch is recent, I ruled that out. Also I didn't want to mess with those Sky programs either. Since the problem was solved above, I'll just leave well enough alone for now. I have a bad tendency to "fiddle" for perfection and it always bites me! Again thanks for responding!!

You only need to concern about a possible dde entry related to the Firefox program.
Don't remove registry keys that are meant for other programs.