I use Outlook Express for email and people often send me link to web pages. Lately, though, these link all seem to be broken; when I click on one, nothing happens. My internet connection is working, so what’s wrong?

I got this message from a friend who spends quite a bit of time online messing around reading about his favourite sport, shooting. He was going on about receiving information about Nightforce rifle scopes and how he couldn’t just click the link in the email and how “his computer wasn’t working properly”. Well, the problem he described is caused by not having an association set up which can interpret the link. This can sometimes happen when you try a different browser then uninstall it. These leaves your operating system without an association for web pages because the old associations now don’t point anywhere.

You can solve this problem by associating your links back with Internet Explorer. Here’s how you do this:

• Click Start, the Control Panel
• Double-click on Internet Options
• Click on the Programs Tab
• If there is a button marked “Make Default” click this
• Otherwise click in the box labeled “Internet Explorer should check to see if it is the default”
• Click OK
• Start Internet Explorer and choose Yes when asked if it should be the default browser.

That should solve the problem for you, but feel free to give me a shout if you still have problems.