Process.Start and first time launching Firefox

I was going over the MbUnit issue list and came across Issue 97. This had a really interesting scenario.  Basically, Firefox was the default web browser but didn’t have a profile associated with it (it hadn’t been executed yet) and when you try and launch it via Process.Start it will load firefox correctly however also throw a Win32Exception.

If you did something like this:

Process.Start(http://www.google.co.uk);

The exception would be:

System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception was unhandled
  Message=”The system cannot find the file specified”
  Source=”System”
  ErrorCode=-2147467259
  NativeErrorCode=2
  StackTrace:
       at System.Diagnostics.Process.StartWithShellExecuteEx(ProcessStartInfo startInfo)
       at System.Diagnostics.Process.Start()
       at System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(ProcessStartInfo startInfo)
       at System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(String fileName)
       at ConsoleApplication1.Program.Main(String[] args) in ……Program.cs:line 13
       at System.AppDomain._nExecuteAssembly(Assembly assembly, String[] args)
       at System.AppDomain.ExecuteAssembly(String assemblyFile, Evidence assemblySecurity, String[] args)
       at Microsoft.VisualStudio.HostingProcess.HostProc.RunUsersAssembly()
       at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart_Context(Object state)
       at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state)
       at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart()
  InnerException:

Very strange, if anyone knows the extract reason why it decides to thrown an exception please leave a comment. Definitely something to be aware might happen.  Wonder how many applications would crash because of this…

When testing your applications, if you want to reproduce this without having to load a clean VM, go into your %AppData% and move the Mozilla directory to another location.  Next time you load Firefox, the dialog will be displayed and the exception will be thrown.