14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft rolled out the IE11 Automatic Update Blocker Toolkit last week, thus giving Windows 7 users who don’t want to get the latest version of Internet Explorer installed on their computers to power block its deployment.
The company has now rolled out a longer blog post on the official IEBlog to provide more details on this tool, explaining that manual installation of IE11 on Windows 7 machines will still be possible.
“The IE11 Automatic Update Blocker Toolkit can be used to prevent Internet Explorer 11 from being automatically installed on users’ Windows 7 machines when it is available via Automatic Update,” Microsoft said.
“This Toolkit has no expiration date and is configured either by running the registry file on the client machine or by deploying Group Policy in domain joined environments. The toolkit also provides an unblock procedure that allows IE11 to be installed through Automatic Update.”
Internet Explorer 11 will be part of Windows 8.1, which is projected to be released to users on October 18. The browser will be available in two different versions, namely desktop and Modern, with the first to be also offered as an optional download to Windows 7 users.
In case your Windows 7 machine is already running the preview version of Internet Explorer 11, which was released for download earlier this year, the toolkit won’t block the installation of the full version, Microsoft warned.
“This ensures that users running IE11 Developer Preview or IE11 Release Preview continue to receive the latest security fixes. Additionally, the toolkit does not prevent users from manually installing IE11 from the Microsoft Download Center,” the company noted.
There are no details as to when the full version of IE11 might be released for Windows 7 users, but given the fact that Windows 8.1 is set to make its debut on Friday, expect more details on this in the coming days.