Microsoft warns of IE7 lock-in with XP SP3

JDMurray

Microsoft warns of IE7 lock-in with XP SP3
Gregg Keizer
May 06, 2008 (Computerworld)

Microsoft Corp. has warned users updating to Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) that they won't be able to downgrade from Internet Explorer 7 to the older IE6 without uninstalling the service pack.

The warning first appeared in a post Monday to a company blog written by the Internet Explorer development team. Microsoft released Windows XP SP3 to Windows Update as an optional download Tuesday.

"If you choose to install XP SP3, Internet Explorer 7 will remain on your system after the install is complete," said Jane Maliouta, an IE program manager, in the blog entry. "Your preferences will be retained. However, you will no longer be able to uninstall IE7. If you go to Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, the Remove option will be grayed out."

The inability to downgrade to IE6 after installing XP SP3 was by design, said Maliouta, because the service pack includes newer versions of the old browser's files. If Microsoft had allowed users to revert back to the pre-SP3 version of IE6 -- the one saved on users' PCs when they upgraded to IE7, and what was used until now to back out of the newer browser -- Windows would have ended up in a "mixed file state," Maliouta said.

Rest here: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9083318

paintb4707

More of a reason to use Firefox.

JDMurray

Actually, this is much ado about nothing. IE7 has been publicly available for over two years now. Except for compatibility issues between necessary, non-maintained legacy applications and IE7, there's no reason to use IE6. Because of the new features in SP3 that bring XP on par with Vista, not being able to rollback to IE6 is perfectly acceptable to me.

And yes, if you use FireFox anyway, what do you really care?

blargoe

I think this was the case with IE6/Windows 2000 as well.

hetty

Even if you dont use IE, I would still upgrade to IE7 as it is more secure than IE6.

RTmarc

I really don't know how accurate this statement is:

If you choose to install XP SP3, Internet Explorer 7 will remain on your system after the install is complete

I was working with a machine this week that I reimaged and had SP3 installed. Long story short, I had to uninstall SP3 and it actually removed IE7 itself. I didn't duplicate the incident but I was definitely thinking it was odd that it would do that.

The reason I had to uninstall SP3 was because of the Windows Geniune Advantage crap. If you install SP3 before you install any updates from Microsoft's update site, you are screwed. Basically what happens is the site says you need to install that before you can access the updates. Problem is, the installation fails because it thinks the version you have installed is a newer copy of the one on their server. It may indeed be newer, but the update site does not recognize it. So, bottom line, at the minimum install the WGA before installing SP3.

JDMurray

hetty wrote:

Even if you dont use IE, I would still upgrade to IE7 as it is more secure than IE6.

What must people don't realize is that many software applications in Windows also use IE. Even if you only use a non-IE Web browser and have it set as your default browser, there are a lot of apps on your computer that are still potentially using IE.

JDMurray

RTmarc wrote:

I was working with a machine this week that I reimaged and had SP3 installed. Long story short, I had to uninstall SP3 and it actually removed IE7 itself. I didn't duplicate the incident but I was definitely thinking it was odd that it would do that.

If you install IE7 on XP before installing SP3 then SP3's uninstaller shouldn't remove IE7. Did SP3 install IE7 for you? The SP3 RC didn't install IE7 and you had to do it separately.

Has anyone experience the "endless reboots" problem with WinXP SP3? It's interesting that these problems didn't surface in the Release Candidates.

XP SP3 cripples some PCs with endless reboots