User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:11.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/11.0 Build ID: 20120312181643 Steps to reproduce: I press on nntp://<server>/<group> link or news:<group> in the browser. Actual results: Thunderbird brings its window to front, but no subscription or any other dialog seen and nothing more happens (no <server> in the accounts panel too). Expected results: Under Win7 32bit TB 11.0.1 just brings its window to front (and may additionally start itself, if not started yet), but _nothing_ happens afterwards on both news: and nntp: URLs. When called manually thunderbird.exe -osint -mail News_URI (as nntp: and news: default Windows protocol handler do) the same thing happens. In case I call it as thunderbird.exe -news News_URI URLs subscription works normally as supposed, but additional TB copy is started instead of using already running one. Even with that case small window asking to subscribe appears first and then quickly overlapped by big TB main window, i.e. two windows focus order is inversed and it is hard to find. Tested on clean profile too.

(In reply to Andrey Chernov from comment #0) Probably duplicate of bug 64142.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64142 suggests the change choosing default server for news: protocol newsgroup. But in my case for nntp://<server>/<group> I already have server in the URI and when I press news:<group> URI, I have some default news server, so don't need to choose it. Moreover, -news option (opposed to Windows handler default, set by TB: -osint -mail) does almost right thing, but just put all needed windows in wrong visibility order (-osint -mail does not produce even overlapped dialog windows).

can we have a screenshot too ?

Screenshot of what exactly? Just main TB window in front when using default protocol handler? It is looking the same as yours, no hidden or overlapped windows or anything unusual. Or you mean second case I describe when small window asking for subscribtion overlapped by main TB window when called manually as "thunderbird.exe -news News_URI"? It is overlapped, i.e. hidden behind it, so it is looking the same as main TB window on the screen. I can move main TB window a bit down to reveal it. See screenshot at http://i.imgur.com/yMxSt.png BTW, the bug is unchanged in v12.0, so I change version number in report.

What's the relation of this bug to bug 617287? Maybe it's just the same bug that raised again and again and never solved.