Updated September 17th, 2010

I noticed last week, this blog entries contents disappeared.  I did not have a backup, and since the purpose of this blog is to keep notes for when things go wrong,  I put it on my list of things to do to recreate it, just in case. Well just in case came yesterday, and due to a nasty virus I ended up repaving my machine. 

What the following does is create a new Mail Client. Once you run this script. Open up Internet explorer, go to tools menu > Internet Options, Select the Programs tab, then change the E-Mail option to "Gmail".  This new mail client is actually an internet explorer window that opens up with Gmail in it.

 First you need  to copy the following Registry Entry and modify it for your needs, after you read the following notes

• If you don't know what registry files are, you should read up on them elsewhere on the internets .. I take no responsibility for you toasting your machine 
• Note that this replaces your default email client on your entire system.   
• Your email address goes in two places.. This example is set up for Google apps for your domains, but should be easily modified  to make gmail work.
• Note that I have specified an Icon ,called Gmail.ico, that lives in the c:\windows directory I leave it up to you to find a suitable Icon, place it in the windows directory and give it the proper name

 Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Gmail]

@="Gmail"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Gmail\DefaultIcon]

@="c:\\windows\\Gmail.ico"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Gmail\Protocols]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Gmail\Protocols\mailto]

"URL Protocol"=""

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Gmail\Protocols\mailto\shell]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Gmail\Protocols\mailto\shell\open]

;Change the Domain and account info below 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Gmail\Protocols\mailto\shell\open\command]

@="rundll32.exe url.dll,FileProtocolHandler http://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com/?extsrc=mailto&url=%1"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Gmail\shell]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Gmail\shell\open]

;Change the Domain and account info below. If I rmber corect this is for Vista, may not be need for XP

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Gmail\shell\open\command]

@="rundll32.exe url.dll,FileProtocolHandler http://mail.google.com/a/domain.com/?account_id=yourname%yourdomain.com"