Activation email link in project opens browser instead of email client

[mrwool]

I am using the old InstallShield Activation Service with the hidden and unsupported Try-And-Buy feature of IS 2012 Pro. However, we just discovered that if you use the activate by email link it opens up a browser window with about 26 tabs. Each tab has a "url" of one snippet of the email request text.



Here is a screen shot of the activation wizard e-mail screen and the tooltip for the email address. The request as formatted in the tooltip is mostly correct and should generate an email from the default client in windows.



I cannot find any customization features for this at all, and simply have provided the target email address in the appropriate dialogue.

For anyone with 2012 Pro curious about this feature:
For 64 bit OS:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\InstallShield\18.0\Professional] "Trialware"=dword:00000001
For 32 bit OS:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\InstallShield\18.0\Professional] "Trialware"=dword:00000001


Can someone help me figure out if this is a fixeable issue. I don't expect there will be a fix released for this as it is essentially a non-supported "secret" feature.

Thanks!

[MichaelU]

This looks to me like a configuration issue on the tested machine. What does the following command reveal?

C:\>reg query HKLM\Software\Classes\mailto\shell\open\command

For me it's the following:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\mailto\shell\open\command
    (Default)    REG_SZ    "C:\PROGRA~2\MICROS~1\Office14\OUTLOOK.EXE" -c IPM.Note /m "%1"

You could try copying the URL you captured in you screenshot and pasting it in the Windows Run dialog box on various machines to confirm the behavior is configuration specific.