Windows XP Home, Service Pack 3, Dell Latitude D830

I’m posting this account in spite of the problem apparently going away spontaneously.  Maybe someone else has noticed something similar.

I keep a lot of Internet SHORTCUTS in VARIOUS folders on my hard drive.  My preferred browser is Google Chrome and up until this morning all my Internet Shortcuts would open in Chrome when I double clicked them.  This is the behaviour I want.

This morning when I started the laptop, I noticed that the icons on all my Internet Shortcuts had CHANGED to the Firefox icon and they opened in Firefox when I double clicked them.  This is not the behaviour I want.

I also noticed that something seemed to be blocking Chrome from being the default browser.  When I started Google Chrome manually (by clicking its program shortcut) it prompted me with “Google Chrome isn’t your default browser.”.  I clicked “Set as default” but this seemed to have no effect because if I closed and reopened Chrome I again got the prompt.  Also Chome’s “Settings” PAGE said it is not the default.

So I tried a reboot after having one more go at setting Chrome as the default browser.  Low and behold this seems to have restored all the Internet Shortcuts and I can confirm Chrome is now the default.  Anyone any idea what could have caused this glitch?

Keith
If someone else uses the PC they may have inadvertantly set FireFox to default...
Other than that i can't think of how it would happen on it's own.Nobody else uses it, and I didn’t do anything Firefox related yesterday.  It’s a mystery.Yes...it is.