MS Dynamics CRM 4.0 Client Configuration Wizard fails with “Outlook is not set as the default mail client” on Windows Server 2008 x64

Whilst trying to install the MS CRM 4.0 client on my laptop today I received the following error:

“Microsoft Outlook is not set as the default mail client. Please set Microsoft Outlook as the default mail client from Control Panel\Internet Options\Programs, and then re-run the check.”

Luckily this was fairly easy to diagnose with the help of the excellent Process Monitor utility. All I had to do was setup a filter to only capture events for the “Microsoft.Crm.Client.Config.exe” process by going to Filter->Filter and selecting Process Name is Microsoft.Crm.Client.exe as an inclusion filter. Then using the toolbar deselect the file events and run through the wizard again until I got an output like this:

Here we can see that the registry key [HKLM]\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Clients\Mail\(Default) key is being interrogated, a quick look at this in Registry Editor shows that the default is “Windows Mail” for some reason as shown below:

All we need to do is change this value from “Windows Mail” to “Microsoft Outlook”:

Then the wizard will run through fine!

Summary

I am unsure if this is a Windows Server 2008 issue or a general x64 issue, however to resolve it change
[HKLM]\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Clients\Mail\(Default)
from “Windows Mail” to “Microsoft Outlook”

I am unsure if the Wow6432 key is unique to my machine / configuration.

How to go up a directory in Vista/2008 using the keyboard (not back)

I posted a gripe I had with explorer http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/28/windows_search_engine_4/comments/ where the backspace key in explorer used to be “Up a directory” in XP and earlier.

However in Vista and Server 2008 they’ve decided that the backspace should be ‘back’ ala Internet Explorer. This was really annoying me, luckily someone posted at the end of that thread that there is a key combination to do it:

CTRL+UP – Up a directory
CTRL+LEFT – Go back
CTRL+RIGHT – Go forward

Useful!

Joel Mansford.

New utility to shutdown your network PCs at Night

We’re just about to launch a new product called NightlyShutdown which is a utility that runs as a Windows service and can be configured to shutdown a PC at a given time.

What’s different about NightlyShutdown is that it is designed to be deployed and configured via Active Directory Domain and as such comes as an MSI and with a Group Policy Template (ADM).

This means that it’s easy to only deploy it to a certain group of PCs and, using the per-user settings only have it shutdown if certain users are or are not logged on.

Please head over to http://www.nightlyshutdown.com where there’s a completely free version for use on 10 PCs or less.

Joel Mansford