Although the bundle between Microsoft's proprietary operating system and browser products seems nothing short of a match made in Redmond heaven, the fact of the matter is that the ubiquitous Windows-IE couple now experiences problems with the arrival of Service Pack 3 for XP. At this point in time, Microsoft is offering no less than three different versions of Internet Explorer, namely IE6, IE7 and IE8 Beta 1. The intimate connection between the previous versions of XP and IE6 is also felt with SP3, but when it comes down to Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 and Internet Explore 7, issues around deployment and removal make integrating the browser versions and the service pack not a simple task at all.

Microsoft found it adequate to inform end users of issues with the integration of XP SP3 RTM Build 5512 with IE8 Beta 1 and IE7 at the eleventh hour. "Installing IE8 Beta1 on Windows XP SP3 is fully supported, so go ahead and upgrade your computers to XPSP3 and then install IE8 Beta 1 to try out our new features. You will be able to uninstall IE8 Beta 1 at any point to revert back to either IE7 or IE6 depending on what you were using before. However, if you already have IE8 Beta 1 installed on XPSP2, Windows XP SP3 will not be offered to you via Windows Update. This is because after you update your system to XPSP3, you will no longer be able to uninstall IE8 Beta 1 and the Remove option will be grayed out under the Add/Remove programs in Control Panel," revealed Jane Maliouta, Deployment Program Manager for IE8.

Maliouta explained that the faulty integration between XP SP3 RTM Build 5512 and IE8 Beta 1 and IE7 is by default. The reason: IE6 is a built in component of XP SP3, and installing the service pack on top of an operating system with either IE7 or IE8 Beta 1 would automatically make the browsers impossible to remove. This because the initial deployment of either IE7 or IE8 Beta 1 creates an uninstall directory with the files from the previous version of the browser. As XP SP3 comes with an updated version of IE6, reverting back to earlier versions of IE after having deployed IE7 or IE8 Beta 1 is not possible.

"Since people are more likely to uninstall beta software, we strongly recommend uninstalling IE8 Beta 1 prior to upgrading to Windows XP SP3 to eliminate any deployment issues and install IE8 Beta 1 after XPSP3 is on your machine," Maliouta said adding "if you must uninstall IE7 after you have upgraded to XPSP3, then you have to first uninstall XPSP3, and then uninstall IE7. After this series of uninstalls, you will be reverted back to a XPSP2, and a stable version of IE6, so feel free to upgrade to XPSP3 again. If you install IE7 after you install XPSP3, then you will be able to uninstall IE7 at any point and be reverted to the newer IE6 version that ships in XPSP3. The restriction on uninstalling only applies to when you install a Windows Service Pack release on top of a standalone IE release."