A Startfox DIY project is actually not all that difficult. In fact, its so easy a half evolved piece of wood could do it.
Ok the first thing you need is a batch to run Firefox.
Open notepad and type the location of the Firefox.exe in short filename
e.g. : %systemdrive%\progra~1\mozill~1\firefox.exe
OR
%systemdrive%\progra~1\mozill~2\firefox.exe
Save that file as something.bat
depending on if you also have Mozilla Thunderbird and which was installed first. You may need to change the number in 'mozill~*' for it to work propertly if you have more than 1 Mozilla product installed before Firefox.
This is the shell launcher. For those that ask the question 'why?' after every statement, you need the shell program or when the next step executes, you will find Firefox wanting to download iexplore.exe and that can be very annoying.
Next, you actully disable IE.
Open regedit.exe and navigate to HKEY_Local_Machine-->Software-->Microsoft-->Windows NT-->CurrentVersion-->Image File Execution Options.
If you have ever wondered how SysInternals' Process Explorer replaces Windows Task Manager, this is how.
Create a key called iexplore.exe
inside that key create a string value called debugger and set the value to the location of your shell launcher e.g. c:\sfx\firefox.bat
NOTE: The shell program can also be saved as something.cmd make sure you have the extension right.
If you haven't already, go to http://www.mozilla.com and download the latest stable or rc of Firefox.
Run iexplore.exe. If Firefox runs, it worked. if not, go into command prompt and execute the line you told the shell launcher to run. If it finds it, make sure you used an absolute location in the registry for example, c:\sfx\firefox.bat instead of %homedrive%\sfx\firefox.bat.
To disable MSHTA.exe,
Open regedit.exe and navigate to HKEY_Local_Machine-->Software-->Microsoft-->Windows NT-->CurrentVersion-->Image File Execution Options.
Create a key called mshta.exe
inside that key create a string value called debugger and set the value to the location of your shell launcher e.g. c:\sfx\firefox.bat.
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