14 DAY TRIAL // Although Microsoft claims that both Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 play well with Windows XP Service pack 3 RTM, the fact of the matter is that there are a few subtleties that cause the browsers to become permanent components of the operating system, rather than offering the uninstall option. The issues involve already installed copies of IE7 and IE8 Beta 1 on XP SP2 and subsequent deployments of XP SP3, both browsers becoming impossible to remove. But there is one additional problem impacting this time the integration of custom Internet Explorer 7 optimized packages and XP SP3 RTM Build 5512.
Following the launch of IE7 back in October 2006, Microsoft offered developers the possibility of building branded/custom variants of the browser through the Internet Explorer Administration Kit 7 (IEAK7). Companies such as Google and Yahoo were among the first to jump at the chance of building and distributing customized IE7 packages, optimized for an essential gamma of their services and products. However, such custom IE7 versions fail to install on XP SP3.
"When installing a branded version of IE7 on Windows XP SP3 machine for the first time, the IE7 install might fail with the following error: "Process 'xmllitesetup.exe /quiet /norestart /er /log:C:WINDOWS' exited with exit code 61681". The reason is that the IE7 package you are trying to install uses old IE7 files. As you may recall, in October of 2007 we released an IE7 update, which in addition to turning on the menu bar by default and removing WGA validation also addresses the XMLLite issue above", explained Jane Maliouta, Deployment Program Manager for IE8.
The reason for this is simple. Despite the fact that XP SP3 ships with Internet Explorer 6 as a default component and not with IE7, it does contain all the updates for IE6's successor, including XMLLite.dll, which is a piece of the latest finalized version of the browser.
"This DLL is necessary to run IE7, and IE Setup installs this component as part of IE7 installation", Maliouta added. "XPSP3 contains an updated version of XMLLite.dll, so when you try to install an older version of IE7 on XPSP3 machines, IE Setup fails to install XMLLite since it's already on your system; hence, you get the error. In the IE7 update, we modified the install logic to only install XMLLite if it's not already present on the system."
Custom IE7 versions need to be tested in order to ensure that they will install on XP SP3. If the installation of the package fails, going back to the drawing board will be a necessary action. For this IEAK7 is required.
"Open the INS file you generated for custom IE7 packages. On the Automatic Version Synchronization screen, click on the Synchronize button. This step downloads the latest IE7 setup files that it will use to generate a new branded package. Complete the rest of the wizard, and click Finish. The new packages will be created in the directory you specified during the beginning of the IEAK Wizard. These new packages will work on XPSP3, so you are ready to distribute them to all your customers", Maliouta concluded.