IE 7 Setup: Secure From the Start

Hi, my name is John Hrvatin and I'm the program manager for Internet Explorer setup. I'd like to share some of the ways setup in IE 7 helps keep you more secure and IE running smoothly.

Prior to installing IE 7, setup runs the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool to clean your system of known malware and help prevent problems installing IE 7 or running it for the first time. If you keep your computer up-to-date using Windows Update, which hopefully everyone does, you will already have the latest version of the cleaner. In that case, setup will re-run the installed version; otherwise, it will download and run the latest version.

Setup also makes sure you have the latest-and-greatest by downloading and installing any available IE updates.  In previous versions of IE, users had to install updates after IE installation and anyone who didn’t was out-of-date. In IE 7, setup takes care of the updates so you can get right to using IE 7.

Here’s a screen shot:

Setup screen

Note to IT Professionals: setup uses the Windows Update Agent to handle download and installation of updates. Therefore, if you're using Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) and have your clients pointed to an internal Windows Update server, setup will use that server and only download approved updates.

A few additional items:

  • Setup verifies that your copy of Windows is genuine.  This guarantees you have access to the latest features, updates, and support. Read more about the benefits of genuine Microsoft software here.
  • Installation of IE 7 will require a reboot.  IE is a core piece of the Windows platform, depended on by many applications as well as OS services. These dependant services and apps must be shutdown to replace IE binaries and certain OS services can only shut down during system shut down.
  • For those of you trying out IE 7 Beta 2 Preview, you can find information about basic setup troubleshooting in the release notes and the newsgroups.

Thanks for your interest in IE and I look forward to hearing your comments!

 - John