No Internet Exploder for you!

Since I hardly ever use Internet Explorer it may seem strange that I'm in a hurry to install IE 7.0 which just came out today (well yesterday now). However I'm an early adopter right, so I'm predisposed to installing all this stuff ASAP, as a matter of fact I first tried out an IE 7.0 beta over a month ago. Hardly a record but earlier than most.

So I'm somewhat unhappy to say that after more than half a dozen attempts and reboots I still can't install IE 7.0 because every time it just announces without reason that the installation failed and I needed to reboot right away because the failed installation may have broken my machine. It took a couple of goes to realize that after rebooting there is an IE bookmark dropped on my desktop with a link to a MS knowledge base article. Through that I was able to discover the IE 7 installation log but unfortunately it matched none of the symptoms described other than maybe I needed to turn off my antivirus software.

So I did turn it off and retried the install with no luck.

By searching for the one error I did find in the setup log (which was "DoRegistryUpdates:UpdSpInstallFromInfSection Failed for ProductInstall.GlobalRegistryChanges.Install error: 0x5") I was then able to locate another KB article that described turning on verbose setup logging which of course required a registry hack. After rebooting and reinstalling and refailing I was able to locate nothing new in the log so I'm none the wiser. I suspect the problem is a registry permission error but I have no idea what entry needs fixing.

Oh well, I'll just keep on waiting, maybe by the time Microsoft decides to push Explorer 7.0 out using Windows Update they will have fixed this little installation SNAFU. What I find really amazing though is the hoops I had to go through to do even a little investigation of the problem - most consumers would have given up right then and there and installed Firefox instead. Really the level of knowledge I had to use to follow their diagnostic instructions was at least that needed for a typical Linux install issue, so how great is that?