Ajit Gaddam: TechNews and Security

According to the latest news coming out of Redmond, WA, all signs point towards IE7 being part of a cumulative roll out/update automatically via windows update. Most major corporations either use SUS or Big IP or someother media to roll out their patches/ hot-fixes/ updates etc… but for the rest of you, here is how you disable automatic update of IE7 on your machine/servers.

Now don’t get me wrong about IE7. I am loving it and infact it is my default browser right now after 2 1/2 years of Firefox. The UI is very well thought out and having tabbed browsing definitely helps. Above all, my primary OS is Windows Vista right now and IE7 fits snugly into the overall picture. So if everything is all gravy, why are we disabling automatic update of IE7?

There are considerable changes that could cause many headaches. Most administrators would prefer to decide when IE 7 is deployed on their network.

This is why microsoft has released the IE 7 blocking tool. It can be downloaded from here at Microsoft’s website.

Once you download and extract the package you will see that it is a command line tool. You simply call the script with the computer name and /b

Alternatively you can simply create a registry key that will block the install. It is located under this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Setup\7.0

The key name is: DoNotAllowIE70

Setting this to 1 blocks the install, setting to 0 allows the install.