Have you tried running Firefox in safe-mode to see if it helps?

• Firefox -> Help -> Restart with Add-ons Disabled

Could you check a setting in the about:config preferences page?

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the filter box, type or paste link.open and pause while the list is filtered

Default settings:

browser.link.open_newwindow = 3
browser.link.open_newwindow.override.external = -1

If you have different settings, you can right-click and choose Reset to restore the defaults.

If you already have that, then perhaps an add-on is overriding the Firefox settings. The above-referenced Safe Mode is a good diagnostic for that.

If the problem still occurs in Safe Mode, then there might be a glitch in the Windows registry settings for handling links.

Yep. Those are all correct.

Here's what I've learned from another site, Sandboxie. And this is why I hate upgrading FF and other s/w if I don't absolutely have to. They always changes stuff:

I believe this link discusses the related change in Firefox:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=491947

Before version 14, Firefox used a mechanism called DDE to send links to an open instance of itself. Sandboxie includes support for this kind of one-way DDE communication, specifically to support that use case, which has now stopped working.

It stopped working because Firefox 14 no longer uses DDE, as described in that Firefox bugzilla page.

I have to take back my earlier post and say that there is nothing I can do about this in Sandboxie and that some kind of workaround will have to be the long term solution.

• * *

Guest10's solution works well, but I can't add it as a default in Sandboxie because it means that if you have an open Firefox outside the sandbox and you run Firefox in the sandbox, then a new window (or tab) opens in Firefox outside the sandbox, and nothing runs in the sandbox. I feel this kind of behavior is too confusing to offer as part of Sandboxie.

• * *

It might be possible to restore the old functionality in Firefox 14. The bugzilla page says something about Firefox 14 trying to remove all DDE functionality, but the following still seems to work for me. Download the following .reg file to your desktop (outside the sandbox), then double-click it, and confirm entering it into the registry. See http://sandboxie.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=13330 for a link and a reg file.

Didn't realize you were running Firefox inside Sandboxie. This is why support is harder than it looks. :-(

"Didn't realize you were running Firefox inside Sandboxie. This is why support is harder than it looks. :-( "

Not sure what that means. FF is trying to load a new window where is used to create a new tab. FF changed the programming protocol. When I test this outside of Sandboxie, I get the same result. It doesn't seem to be Sandboxie related. Again, this is why users don't upgrade. I'd go back to FF 12 if I could.

Any suggestions?

It still works the old way for me with the default settings (new tab in last active window). Not sure why our results are different, unless my registry is just not completely up-to-date with the new settings. However, it does appear that my ddeexec key is blank, so I do not think I'm relying on DDE. ??