It was not until recently (when I had to actually open Internet Explorer to test some cross-browser stuff) that I realized my workstation and my home PC had a particular problem in Internet Explorer: anything I typed into Internet Explorer opened in Firefox (my default browser). After some Googling, a forum thread over at Neowin.net provided a solution - just delete the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\ {c90250f3-4d7d-4991-9b69-a5c5bc1c2ae6} registry entry.

Long version for Windows Registry newbies (alternatively, you can create a .reg file and run it like someone said in the thread):

  1. Click our Start button, then "Run...".
  2. Type "regedit" into the box that appears and hit Enter. This will bring up the Registry Editor.
  3. Drill down the tree on the left pane under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT until you find the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\ {c90250f3-4d7d-4991-9b69-a5c5bc1c2ae6} entry.
  4. Delete the entry.
  5. Close the Registry Editor - you're done.

Anyway, turns out this is a bug caused by having "IE7 Beta1 in an unsupported side-by-side configuration with a version of IE6", as officially stated in IEBlog.

Painfully, I had to look all over again for the solution back home because I didn't bookmark the page and it didn't make sense to run over to the office just for this. Now it's bookmarked in del.icio.us and blogged so I won't forget.