[ PFIR ] Important Warning Re MS Internet Explorer 7 Installation Failures

Begin forwarded message:

From: [email protected]
Date: November 3, 2006 7:34:10 PM EST
To: [email protected]
Subject: [ PFIR ] Important Warning Re MS Internet Explorer 7  
Installation Failures
Reply-To: PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility announcement list  
<[email protected]>


       Important Warning Re MS Internet Explorer 7 Installation Failures

              ( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000198.html )


Greetings.  While I do not yet have enough information to
characterize this as a widespread problem, I wanted to issue a
heads-up that I'm seeing 100% failure rates on installations of the
new Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 on local machines here.

MS is pushing IE7 down as a "high priority optional update" in the
current Windows Update cycle.  On the XP machines where I've
attempted this install (varying hardware platforms, all validated
and fully updated SP2 systems), the installation process appears to
go smoothly, but any attempts to run IE7 afterwards fail.

There are two different failure modes.  In some cases, attempts to
start IE7 simply result in "hourglass" then exit.  In other cases,
the systems appear to hang in hourglass and require a hardware reset
to reboot.  I do not yet know the underlying factors causing this
situation on these multiple systems.

The process to uninstall IE7 (via Add/Remove Programs) has worked
quickly and apparently properly in all cases so far to restore the
systems to IE6 along with all previous settings.

This is pretty much all that I have so far, and I would welcome
reports from anyone else seeing similar problems with IE7.

I thought that it was worth putting out this warning now, since many
persons do depend on proper operation of IE (my browser of choice is
Mozilla Firefox, but there are some applications that will only work
properly under Internet Explorer, unfortunately).

I'll provide more info as available and appropriate. Thanks.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
[email protected] or [email protected]
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
    - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, IOIC
    - International Open Internet Coalition - http://www.ioic.net
Co-Founder, CIFIP
    - California Initiative For Internet Privacy - http://www.cifip.org
Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
DayThink: http://daythink.vortex.com
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