IE8 and XP SP3 forever!

8th September 2008

Microsoft has officially warned users about the problems when installing beta versions of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) onWindows XP with Service Pack 3 (SP3).
Furthermore, it became known that when installing IE7 users can not go back to IE6 without prior removal of SP3.
The problem with IE8 is as follows: if a user has installed the first beta of IE8 Beta 1 before installing SP3, and after having installed SP3 decided to upgrade to version IE8 Beta 2, he (or she) will no longer be able to remove from his (her) computer neither SP3, nor IE8 Beta 2. To return to previous versions of the service packs and IE, he (she) needs to restore the whole system.
To avoid problems, Microsoft experts recommend users before installing IE8 Beta 2, first remove the package Windows XP SP3, then remove IE8 Beta 1, then reinstall XP SP3 and only then set IE8 Beta 2.
Note, that Windows XP tries to automatically update an installed copy of IE8 Beta 1 to version IE8 Beta 2: it should be done with caution. In its turn, Windows Vista offers not to update IE8 Beta 1 to the second beta version through Windows Update, so that users will have to delete a copy of IE8 Beta 1 and set IE8 Beta 2 manually.
Immediately after the release of IE8 Beta 2 the company Microsoft has published an extensive list of known drawbacks and problems with compatibility. It is curious, but out of 9 applications only two cause complete system failure, these two being products from Microsoft. In particular, the system completely fails when installing Visual Studio.NET 7 on the hardware with already installed IE8 Beta 2.
Besides the browser IE8 Beta 2 turned out incompatible with Windows Live Mail (formerly known as Windows Live Desktop), which was to replace Outlook Express and Windows Mail. At responding to a message in Windows Live Mail under a machine with IE8 Beta 2, the system fails.