I recently upgraded my Windows XP x64 installation to Windows 2003 Service Pack 2 (for those not in the know, SP2 for Windows 2003 also applies to XP x64 since they are the same code base) only to run into an issue where clicking on any urls/hyperlinks from desktop applications (Outlook, Word, etc) generated the following error:

"General Failure. The URL was (hyperlink name)."

I use Firefox as my default browser, and it was definitely related to SP2 as this problem didn't show up until after the upgrade.  Google didn't turn up much, but my initial hunch was that somehow the windows shell had "forgotten" how to link http to the application used to handle that protocol.  The fix is easy enough: Set IE as your default browser, then set the default back to your browser of choice. 

I didn't break out regmon to actually monitor what the underlying issue was, but all is good now and hyperlinks shell out correctly from my desktop applications.  More than likely it's an SP2 + Firefox issue and the registry keys just needed a reminder.

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