Protect Yourself From Tech Support Scams Learn More
October 14, 2019
Tech support scams are an industry-wide issue where scammers trick you into paying for unnecessary technical support services. You can help protect yourself from scammers by verifying that the contact is a Microsoft Agent or Microsoft Employee and that the phone number is an official Microsoft global customer service number.
* Please try a lower page number.
* Please enter only numbers.
Hi Scott,
Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Community Forums.
Based on the information, you are trying to set default browser to open different websites in different browsers using shortcuts.
This is not possible as double clicking the shortcut will invoke whichever default browser is set and site will open in that. In order to open different websites in different browsers you will have to open the browser and type the address to open the site.
Hope the information helps.
Let us know if you need further assistance with Windows related issues. We will be happy to help.
Did this solve your problem?
Sorry this didn't help.
Great! Thanks for marking this as the answer.
How satisfied are you with this reply?
Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.
How satisfied are you with this response?
Thanks for your feedback.
11 people were helped by this reply
·Did this solve your problem?
Sorry this didn't help.
Great! Thanks for marking this as the answer.
How satisfied are you with this reply?
Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.
How satisfied are you with this response?
Thanks for your feedback.
That works well with IE
with Chrome I get:
[{000214A0-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}] Prop3=19,11 [InternetShortcut] URL=https://my_url.com/ IDList=
Any idea?
Did this solve your problem?
Sorry this didn't help.
Great! Thanks for marking this as the answer.
How satisfied are you with this reply?
Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.
How satisfied are you with this response?
Thanks for your feedback.
That seems to be the properties of a shortcut rather than a URL. What exactly are you doing when that happens.
I don't have Chrome installed here to test it with a command line parameter, but the content of a batch file I made for a customer with this issue is shown below. It worked fine with a hard coded URL.
The location of chrome.exe might be different for you - customize as needed.
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe http://carquestdirecthit.com/
Did this solve your problem?
Sorry this didn't help.
Great! Thanks for marking this as the answer.
How satisfied are you with this reply?
Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.
How satisfied are you with this response?
Thanks for your feedback.
it works with Firefox and IE11 but not with Chrome
this one is bad:
start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" %1
exit
the ones below work:
start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" %1
exit
start "" "\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" %1
exit
Chrome by itself appears quite happy as a browser and the hard-coded line below works too
start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" http://www.google.ca
exit
The version of Chrome is: 33.0.1750.154 m
2 people were helped by this reply
·Did this solve your problem?
Sorry this didn't help.
Great! Thanks for marking this as the answer.
How satisfied are you with this reply?
Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.
How satisfied are you with this response?
Thanks for your feedback.
This issue caught my interest, and I've been digging into it. I confirmed what you found with Chrome.
IE and Firefox are programmed so that if a shortcut is passed on the command line they extract the URL and act on it. Chrome instead just displays the shortcut (.lnk file) as a file in the browser.
I have found a solution by writing a batch file with some VB script that internally exacts the URL from the shortcut passed in and then uses the URL with a Chrome command line. This is working successfully, I want to clean it up and test it a little more.
I will then post the code for you.
Did this solve your problem?
Sorry this didn't help.
Great! Thanks for marking this as the answer.
How satisfied are you with this reply?
Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.
How satisfied are you with this response?
Thanks for your feedback.
I have been digging through stuff and testing with variations to no help
your VB script sounds like the right approach
Did this solve your problem?
Sorry this didn't help.
Great! Thanks for marking this as the answer.
How satisfied are you with this reply?
Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.
How satisfied are you with this response?
Thanks for your feedback.
Did this solve your problem?
Sorry this didn't help.
Great! Thanks for marking this as the answer.
How satisfied are you with this reply?
Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.
How satisfied are you with this response?
Thanks for your feedback.
The script is below. It seems to work well. I'll be interested to see how it goes for you. Careful re. word wrap. I put all this in a file named ChromeIt.cmd
:: ChromeIt.cmd 03/18/2014 Tue 10:57:pm
:: This batch file will extract the URL from a shortcut to allow it to be
:: passed on a command line to the Chrome browser. (IE and Firefox do that
:: on their own whereas Chrome opens the shortuct as a file.)
:: Credit to stackoverflow.com where some of this code was found.
:: GTS 03/18/2014
@echo off
setlocal
Call :GetTarget "%~1" tgt
:GetTarget
@echo off & setlocal
set gt=%temp%\_.vbs
echo set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")>%gt%
echo set Lnk = WshShell.CreateShortcut(WScript.Arguments.Unnamed(0))>>%gt%
echo wscript.Echo Lnk.TargetPath>>%gt%
set script=cscript //nologo %gt%
For /f "delims=" %%a in ( '%script% "%~1"' ) do set target=%%a
del %gt%
endlocal & set %~2=%target%
:: For XP
:: Start "" "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" %tgt%
:: For Windows 7
Start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" %tgt%
exit
2 people were helped by this reply
·Did this solve your problem?
Sorry this didn't help.
Great! Thanks for marking this as the answer.
How satisfied are you with this reply?
Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.
How satisfied are you with this response?
Thanks for your feedback.
This works like a charm - great job and many thanks
I modified it to 'automatically' select the Chrome install directory depending on the OS. I tested it with Win XP 32 bit and Win7 x64. It could be further modified to confirm that Chrome is actually installed. See below:
:: ChromeIt2.cmd 03/21/2014 Fri 6:57:pm
:: This batch file will extract the URL from a shortcut to allow it to be
:: passed on a command line to the Chrome browser. (IE and Firefox do that
:: on their own whereas Chrome opens the shortcut as a file.)
:: Credit to stackoverflow.com where some of this code was found.
:: GTS 03/18/2014
@echo off
setlocal
Call :GetTarget "%~1" tgt
exit
:GetTarget
@echo off & setlocal
set gt=%temp%\_.vbs
echo set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")>%gt%
echo set Lnk = WshShell.CreateShortcut(WScript.Arguments.Unnamed(0))>>%gt%
echo wscript.Echo Lnk.TargetPath>>%gt%
set script=cscript //nologo %gt%
For /f "delims=" %%a in ( '%script% "%~1"' ) do set target=%%a
del %gt%
endlocal & set %~2=%target%
:: add-on to your script
IF exist "C:\Program Files (x86)"\. GOTO 64bit
:: For 32 bit OS
Start "" "%ProgramFiles%\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" %tgt%
exit
:64bit
:: For Windows 7 x64
Start "" "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" %tgt%
exit
2 people were helped by this reply
·Did this solve your problem?
Sorry this didn't help.
Great! Thanks for marking this as the answer.
How satisfied are you with this reply?
Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.
How satisfied are you with this response?
Thanks for your feedback.