That was quite a diatribe, so I hope these links are of some help.

Make OE the default e-mail client:
http://www.oehelp.com/oedef.aspx

For links in e-mail:
http://www.oehelp.com/oelnk.aspx

And:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=306098

If you have MS Outlook installed, also see:
http://www.oehelp.com/OETips.aspx#13
--
Bruce Hagen
MS-MVP Outlook Express
~IB-CA~

"Jim McLaughlin" wrote in message
...
My sister got a new machine last Saturday and I helped her do setup.
Its
her hardware upgrade from a old Pentium 233 machine.

New machine is a Compaq, 1012 memory, 200 gig HD, some flavor of Intel P -
4
processor ( she lives about 200 miles away and I don't have the machine
here
in front of me to dig up the processor ID), runs XP Home Edition as the
OS,
in an edition which already includes SP 2 for XP. Using Internet Explorer
(IE) that came with the machine as the browser. Trying to set up Outlook
Express (OE) as the default mail and news reader.



Issue -- and steps already taken -- is as follows:

Ran OE setup and put in all the correct values for her ISP (Charter.net)
mail and news accounts, that is pop.charter.net for incoming mail;
smtp.charter.net for outgoing mail, news.charter.net for news. Entered
her user name and password.

OE launched and operated beautifully from the "Start" - "All Programs" -
"Outlook Express". Did several E mail and news group test messages,
logged onto my mail on another provider (Comcast) and found her outgoing
mail to my account fine, mailed stuff back to her that arrived fine on
her account.

Close OE, go launch IE , hit the mail icon at the top of IE, it defaults
to full Outlook, not OE. No big deal, go to IE - "Tools" - "Intrernet
Options" - "Programs" , get the drop down menu that lets you select what
programs to use with IE to do mail, news, etc. Click the arrows at the
right of each of the lines for "Mail" and "Newsgroups", get the drop down
list, (Which has only two entries in each list those being OE and
Outlook) and click OE for both entries. Outlook Express appears on each
line. Click "ApplY" and click OK and close dialog boxes. Go back to
IE, click the mail icon ( the envelope looking thing) and get OE opening
right up a the mail reader. Everything looks fine.

Install printer, do a few other things. Test printer, all fine.

Install Office '97 Professional as we have it and the Office 2003 which
comes with the machine is a 60 day trial
version. Office ''97 runs buggy. Decide to uninstall it. It appears
to uninstall fine. After uninstallng Office '97, test the Office 2003
Word trial version, it runs fine.

Go to do some E mail. Open IE, hit Mail Icon, but nothing opens. NO
OE. Say several choice words, go through the Tools" - "Intrernet
Options" - "Programs" routine, get the drop down. The box / line for
"Mail" is blank. The box for newsreader is NOT blank. The newsreader
box
still
contains OE as the entry for news. There is a drop down arrow at the
right sde of the box for Mail reader. Click the arrow, get only one
possible choice, that being full Outlook, not OE. Thats not good. Try
to click the cursor into the blank line, and type in "Outlook Express".
Can't get cursor to click into the box, can't type anything in the box.

Decide to see if OE will still open from the main panel. Go to "Start"
- All Programs - Outlook Express and OE opens beautifully, we send and
receive several E mails as a test. Seems to not be an issue internal to
OE.
Go
under the hood in OE, click everythig I can find in Tools - Options - in
OE to choose / denote it as the default mail reader. Click apply and OK
on
all
of those. Close OE, go to IE and try to open the mail icon. Again, we
get nthing as the mail reader. Curses.

Back under the hood in both IE and OE, repeat processes above. IE still
only gives full Outlook as a mail reader choice. OE again gets denoted /
chosen
in the OE program as the default. Close everything up, reboot. Run IE,
same issue -- it has no mail reader, and when I go back under the hood in
IE it only allows selection of full Outlook as the mail reader and won't
allow a change. Yet OE still runs fine when run from the main panel
("Start - All Prgrams - OE")

Thought about updates for XPHome, ran the Microsoft (MS ) XP updates
and downloaded and installed almost 50 "critical updates."

Still the same problem with IE on using full Outlook as the default mail
reader and not allowing a change -- nor even offering a change option.
Did the full under the hod thing with both IE and OE. IE will nt offer OE
as
a default choice fr newsreader. OE gets selected within OE as the
default
mail reader, gets "Applied" and "OKed", reboot, run IE and still the blank
as
a mail reader and no option to run OE.


I'm going to start mining my way through the MS Knowledgebase, but thats a
long tedious and often not real helpful process.

Help?

Any ideas.

Thanks.