I have a fresh copy of Windows 8 Pro installed from MSDN. I have Google Chrome installed (stable channel) and it is set as my default browser. I even went into Control Panel > Default Programs to ensure that Chrome had all its defaults.

When other desktop applications try to launch my browser they always fail. For example, while trying to install the Android SDK for Windows the installer accurately detected that I did not have the JDK installed. It provides a friendly button to visit java.oracle.com. When pressing this button, nothing happens at all.

You can see that here: http://youtu.be/XXL8GhuWWg0

If it were only that application that was having issues I wouldn't think anything of it but I have been encountering similar issues all over the place. Probably the most irritating one is when visual studio has updates; clicking the update button does nothing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwd1mn3TId0

You can see in that screencast that Visual Studio is not able to launch the browser no matter what I click. The update button doesn't do anything and neither do the two links in the update's description.

Any suggestions? I'm assuming it's a Windows issue since it is happening in multiple applications.

UPDATE: Setting IE as the default browser fixes the issue. So it has something to do with it not being able to launch Chrome programmatically. Is it even possible to workaround this bug or do I have to suffer with IE as default for now?