User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040614 Firefox/0.9 Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040614 Firefox/0.9 Always when I start Mozilla Thunderbird I get this; "Mozilla Thunderbird Could not be set as the default mail application because a registry key could not be updated. Verify with your system administrator that you have write access to your system registryl, and then try again" Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Start Mozilla Thunderbird 2. Answer 'Yes' on question whether to set as default Actual Results: That popup Expected Results: The popup should go away and should not re-appear This is version 0.7 (20040616). Also happens if I manually try to set it via options. Did a quite thorough search for this bug as I'm sure others have seen it but could not find it. Maybe just my searching skills are lacking...

Confirmed on Thunderbird 0.7.1. See attachment 1 [details] [diff] [review] for Regmon.txt, output from Sysinternals Regmon on a typical startup. Pressed OK for setting Thunderbird as default application and stopped capture after the error popup.

xref bug 224824 -- possibly a dupe.

From bug 104256 comment 10: > Right now we only one error message for handling all the error cases. > The error message we have is > "Netscape Mail could not be set as the default mail application because a > registry key could not be updated. Verify with your system administrator that > you have write access to your system registry, and then try again." > > It is better if we can have different messages. Here are the error cases. > These cases can happen while setting/unsetting the preference. > > 1) Swapping the dll failed because it is in use or the user does not have > permission > 2) Setting the registry keys failed. Regarding DLL swap -- see bug 109362.

Confirming on branch zipped version 0.8 (20040912). The dialog comes up every time I start Tb. In order to reproduce, one must test under a new user account (eg with "power user" privileges). Otherwise, a proper registry key (remnant from previous installations) might prevent the bug from appearing. Curiously, registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Clients\Mail contains "Mozilla Thunderbird which I assume to be is correct. Moving to Installer component.

*** Bug 252617 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I was wrong wrt the component : After saying yes to the aforementioned startup dialog, Tools->Options->General shows that the preference hasn't been set (option "Use Thunderbird as the default mail app" is not checked). Checking the option from there isn't remembered either, at next startup. More likely a Preferences issue.

I use Thunderbird under "power user" rights. When I logged as administrator and changed "Program Access and defaults" so that Thunderbird is the default mail client for windows, the problem gone. Is anyone else able to resolve the bug using that hint ?

Thomas Novin, did you ever check the information at bug 109362 comment 26 et seq? That might provide a solution to your problem. Dimitrios, unless you have gotten the error message seen in the original report, you have a different bug. With TB 0.8, Win2K, I did see the make-default operation worked, just as you described: make-default with a non-Admin account did not "take" -- TB always asked if it should be made default on startup. Running as an Admin and making it default then fixed the problem. But I never saw the error message in comment 0, which is a completely different problem. I believe Firefox has much the same problem. Also, this behavior was different in TB 0.7.

I did not check the code, but proberbly the wrong registry keys are set, check out: http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/en-us/regentry/69673.asp?frame=true Windows uses the information of HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT to determin which programs to start. As of windows 2000: "The content of HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT comes from two sources: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes. If a subkey or entry appears in either location, it also appears in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. If the values of entries in the two Classes subkeys conflict, only the value in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes appears in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT." Conclusion: HKLM for system default and HKCU for user default and check for default in HKCR

(In reply to comment #10) > Conclusion: HKLM for system default and HKCU for user default > and check for default in HKCR Thomas Novin: That's all well and good, BUT -- it likely is unrelated to the error you listed in the original report: "Mozilla Thunderbird Could not be set as the default mail application because a registry key could not be updated. Verify with your system administrator that you have write access to your system registry, and then try again." That error message and its cause (which is not necessarily registry related) is described at bug 104256 (as I noted in comment 4); and the solution to the "DLL Swap" problem is found at bug 109362 comment 26.

(In reply to comment #11) > (In reply to comment #10) > > Conclusion: HKLM for system default and HKCU for user default > > and check for default in HKCR > > Thomas Novin: That's all well and good, BUT [...] I see I erred here -- comment 10 was by Rolf, not Thomas. My apologies for the confusion. Thomas Novin, I still am interested in your response to comment 9.

No response from reporter, duping. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 109362 ***