Windows 7 Beta cannot install Internet Explorer 8 final

Posted March 20th, 2009 in Windows

The final release of Internet Explorer 8 has been made available today. I'm currently running the beta version of Windows 7 and downloaded the IE8 version for Vista, thinking it would be the correct version. I was surprised when I went to install it that the message "Internet Explorer 8 is not supported on this operating system" as shown in the screenshot below.

So I went back to the Internet Explorer 8 download page and noticed an "Attention Windows 7 Users". Clicking that revealed the following message:

"We're sorry, but you won't be able to download Internet Explorer 8 for Windows 7 Beta at this time

"Windows 7 Beta already includes a pre-release candidate version of Internet Explorer 8 that is optimized for that release. Windows 7 enables unique features and functionality in Internet Explorer 8 including Windows Touch and Jump Lists which require additional product tests to ensure we are providing the best Windows experience for our customers. We will continue to update the version of Internet Explorer 8 running on Windows 7 as the development cycles of Windows 7 progress and plan to include the final version of Internet Explorer 8 in the release candidate version of Windows 7 later this year. For the latest information on Windows 7 visit the Windows 7 site."

A little surprising that they won't let it be installed but never mind; I don't use Internet Explorer anyway but was just interested to see if all my sites rendered correctly in the final version of IE8. I'll just have to install it into one of my test virtual machines instead.