I’ve got an HTC Imagio that came pre-loaded with Opera 9.5. I decided to try out the two newer versions of Opera (9.7 and 10) though to see if I preferred either of them but in the end decided to just stick with 9.5. I uninstalled the two newer versions and all was fine except for the fact that Internet Explorer was now the default browser on my device.

Opera 9.5 doesn’t seem to have an option in the app itself to set itself as the default browser. I searched the web plenty and found some threads on ppcgeeks.com that pointed to the following registry key as the one that you need to set to change the default browser:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Shell\Rai\DEFBROWSER\0
Value = Opera Browser
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Shell\Rai\DEFBROWSER\1
Value = “\Windows\OperaL.exe”

While those did the trick for some scenarios, there were still some that continued to launch Internet Explorer instead of Opera. For example, when launching the browser from HTC’s TouchFlo app, Opera launched. However, whenever I clicked on a link from within an email or within an app like TouchTwit, Internet Explorer was launched. Further searching led me to find a few other keys in the registry that proved to work (at least for me). I had to also set the following key as follows:

HKCR\htmlfile\Shell\Open\Command\Default
Value = “\Windows\OperaL.exe” “%1″

There are others (HKCR\hhtp and HKCR\https) that should also be set this way but there already were in my case so the only one I had to update with the htmlfile one.

Hope this helps anyone who finds themselves in the same boat.