Windows XP Update includes Internet Explorer 7

Posted November 21st, 2008 in Windows

I run Windows XP in a virtual machine with Internet Explorer 6 so I can easily test websites in that browser version natively. I noticed Windows XP Automatic Updates wanted to automatically update Internet Explorer to version 7 so thought I should post about this here to warn people if they need to ensure IE6 remains on a particular machine.

I have automatic updates configured to notify me of updates and not automatically install anything, so when the notification popped up I clicked through to the advanced install to see what it wanted to install, and there in the list was Internet Explorer 7 as shown in the screenshot below:

windows xp update includes internet explorer 7

Naturally I didn't want to install Internet Explorer 7 because this virtual machine is specifically set up for testing Internet Explorer 6 and I prefer to run it natively instead of using one of those multiple IE setups. (They don't quite render things as they should, and I believe some of the Javascript functionality doesn't always work correctly for the browser version).

So just a quick warning that if you need to keep IE 6 running on a particular machine for whatever reason, make sure automatic updates is not configured to install updates automatically and always check to see what it's going to update or install.