Firefox 37.0.2 mailto: launches MS Live Mail app in Windows 8.1 but without a compose window

Question

After a Windows 7 to 8.1 upgrade, email links in Firefox 37.0.2 now launch my mail client (Windows Live Mail) but not a compose message window in that app.

In Windows 7, the Firefox option "Email Link" would launch WLM and open a compose message window pre-populated with my email address as sender and web page link. This message was integrated with my address book for autocomplete suggestions for "To".

My default mail settings are all correct as evidenced by the fact that WLM DOES launch from mailto: links, but it seems to launch just the WLM executable without the -compose option.

Another oddity: When I first reset my defaults for mailto to WLM, mailto DID link to the compose message function of WLM, but has not done so since. No other software installs were done.

I've checked and rechecked, turned on and off mail default, with no change. Any advice is much appreciated. I've researched this for hours but can't find solution save a registry change which seems edgy to me.

Answer 1

I found an answer to my own question. I upgraded to the latest Firefox (38.0) and got the same results. Then I used Firefox' Refresh https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-ons-and-settings and that fixed the problem: Firefox File -> Email Link launched my default mail client (Windows Live Mail) with a compose window pre-populated with the selected page URL and From address. In retrospect it may be true that the upgrade to Firefox 38.0 may have been unnecessary, i.e. that a refresh on the earlier release (Firefox 37.0.2) may also have fixed the problem. I did not try that.