Windows 7 "Default E-mail client not properly installed" error message.

[larryk]

Hi, Folks...I'm very new to computers (as I will soon prove!) so please bear with me. I have a Toshiba laptop, using Windows 7 (64bit) with IE9. I use Gmail and have installed their Notifier. When I attempt to use a webpage link to send an email or document, I get the error message, "default email client not properly installed".

I have no clue what this means or how to fix it, so I attempted to research it online. I came out of that experience with hundreds of answers and even more confused.

I'd like to keep this a simple as possible. Can anyone walk me through the steps? I think I'd like to use Google & not Windows Live (have no idea why though), then I heard Post Box Express was simple, then I was told to press 'options' in my Notifier, but that went nowhere. To sum it up, I don't know what I'm doing !

Thanks for any help.

larryk

Good grief! Now looking at my preview, I'm seeing double underlines (========) strewn all about. Now what?

 

[Trouble]

larryk;
Helo and welcome to the forums.
Do you have the Gmail Notifier running in the system tray (notification area), bottom right of screen on taskbar near the clock, if so....
Right-click the Notifier icon in your system tray, and select Options.
Check the box next to Use Gmail for internet mailto: links.
Click OK.
If not download and install it from here.
Regards
Randy

 

[larryk]

Hi Trouble, thanks for responding. As far as I can tell I do have the Gmail Notifier and it is working, i.e. I get pop-up notifications & bells when unread mail arrive. When I go into Gmail settings, however, it tells me "this browser does not support desktop notifications"....so that's another mystery to me.

I have tried your suggestion of clicking 'options' and when I do, I get a drop-down box that asks me what web browser I want Gmail Notification to use when displaying my inbox. My choices are Internet Explorer and System Default. I think I tried both, to no avail. Which one should I choose?

Thanks again,
Larry

 

[larryk]

P.S. That box is checked. Larry

 

[Trouble]

Hi Trouble, thanks for responding. As far as I can tell I do have the Gmail Notifier and it is working, i.e. I get pop-up notifications & bells when unread mail arrive. When I go into Gmail settings, however, it tells me "this browser does not support desktop notifications"....so that's another mystery to me.

I have tried your suggestion of clicking 'options' and when I do, I get a drop-down box that asks me what web browser I want Gmail Notification to use when displaying my inbox. My choices are Internet Explorer and System Default. I think I tried both, to no avail. Which one should I choose?

Thanks again,
Larry

Sounds like you may only have the default Windows 7 Browser installed (Internet Explorer) and hopefully, without starting a browser war discussion as to which one is better. Consider downloading and installing Mozilla Firefox, I think that you will find that some problems that you are having and more specifically this one, will just seem to work automagically in FireFox.
After installing, select the drop down arrow in the top left of the browser "Firefox" tab.
Then choose Options and Options again
from the resultant dialog box select the Applications tab from the icon along the top and
scroll down to "mailto"
Select that and use the drop down arrow on the right to select
"Use Gmail"
Now assuming properly configured mailto: links, you should be taken to the Gmail, Compose Mail window with the email address already present in the new email window.
I like Internet Explorer, but sometimes you'll discover that it doesn't always perform well regarding some features.
Hope this helps.
Regards
Randy

 

[larryk]

Thanks again, Randy... Would I get similar results if I wanted to give Google Chrome a try? Have you heard any good or bad about Chrome?

Larry

 

[Trouble]

Larry:
As I mentioned earlier, I didn't want to see this thread devolve into a discussion of browsers and which one is better for this reason or that.
I have five Tier 1 browsers installed on my machine (IE9, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Chrome) because I do the occasional Website development project and like to check with multiple browsers.
That being said, I still use Firefox as my default system browser because I just find it generally more forgiving and feature rich (with plugins) and things like you are trying to do just seem to work out of the box with Firefox.
Did you try it??
I'd rather see you getting your email working like you want and I suspect that Firefox with do that for you. Afterwards there is no reason why you couldn't experiment with any number of alternative browsers to see which one you like best. It's usually a matter of personal opinion based entirely on some subjective criteria that only the various browser fan-atics can see or understand.
Regards
Randy

 

[larryk]

Randy....Stated very well..I will give that a try and appreciate the advice!

Larry