One flaw with Vista that really irks me is when Activation goes awry. It seems to penalize users for their expertise.

When Vista has an Activation failure goes into Reduced Functionality Mode, it provides you with a web browser window. This is so that you can buy a new Windows product key, to quickly re-activate your computer. You’re probably already balking at the fact that this is the most direct way to fix an activation issue, but I digress. The offering of only an web browser window upon lockdown (from an activation failure) isn’t as draconian as it may appear… that web browser window will let you access the file system (just change the location to C: and up pops a web browser window). You can then take control of your computer, and potentially fix an activation issue.

However, this doesn’t work as intended if you have changed your default web browser. Firefox, Safari, and Opera lock out file system access… to be more secure. But, Reduced Functionality Mode doesn’t negate this problem, it loads your default browser… leaving the user stranded to troubleshoot.

The user doesn’t have a clear fix. Even in Safe Mode, Default Programs has been stripped from the Control Panel array… making it very hard to switch back to Internet Explorer. The workaround is to boot into Safe Mode, launch Internet Explorer, go to the Tools menu, then Internet Options, then Programs. There you will find the option to make Internet Explorer the default browser again.

The fix in Windows should be to override the default programs setting and load Internet Explorer in Reduced Functionality Mode. This shouldn’t conflict with EU regulations since it is a diagnostic mode, not intended for users to rely on. An alternative would be to load the default (non-IE) browser, but when doing so, also open an instance of Explorer.exe to allow users to troubleshoot while keeping their default browser option.

Either way, if one or the other doesn’t make it into Vista SP1, this issue is critical enough that it shouldn’t wait for SP2. Microsoft should implement this as soon as possible for Vista SP0 and SP1 owners. The fact that SP1 removes the requirement to load Reduced Functionality Mode shouldn’t matter, Reduced Functionality Mode will still exist and bear this issue in both generations of Vista.