If you’re sharing computer with your family or friends, most likely you’ll have a conflict of favorite default web browser problem. Let’s say you like to use Firefox and you’ve set it as your default browser. When your brother logs in to his user account and runs Internet Explorer, he’ll get a prompt that says “Internet Explorer is not currently your default browser. Would you like to make it your default browser?”
Hitting the enter key or selecting Yes will change the default web browser to Internet Explorer and this effects all other users in the same computer. This is a never ending battle of setting the default web browser. Windows XP’s user interface does not provide you an option to set a per-user default web browser. One setting affects all users, machine-wide. Here’s a solution to this annoying default web browser problem.
DefaultBrowser allows you set the default web browser for your user profile in Windows XP, without affecting the other users. The list of browsers you see in the Presets are tested and working flawlessly as user defaults. Note that the user interface in Windows XP does not provide an option for setting the default browser for each user.
Apart from the Presets list, there is an option at the bottom which allows you choose the Web Browser program file and set it as the default. You may use this section if your favorite browser is not listed under Presets. As you read in the dialog, this method does not work with all the browsers. If the results are not satisfactory using this method, you can undo the configuration by clicking the Reset button.
Currently DefaultBrowser supports Avant Browser, Deepnet Explorer, Maxthon, SlimBrowser, CrazyBrowser, GreenBrowser, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Firefox Portable Edition and Opera.
This tool requires Administrator or Limited User account and it does not work under Guest account. To successfully apply the per-user setting, choose No when your Web browser prompts to make itself the default, as it might affect all the user profiles. I’d also advice you to disable checking of default web browser on startup so you won’t get the prompt everything you launch the browser. This tool is a freeware and designed to use for Windows XP system only.
Now everyone can use their favorite web browser as default without making any changes on other user accounts.