IE7 Installation Error

[kcnychief]

I am trying to install IE7 on a desktop and a laptop, and get the same error. Software wise they are pretty much 100% identical, with the obvious driver differences.

Here is the error I get, verbatim in the KB article..

Internet Explorer 7 could not be installed. You must restart your system to confirm that any changes to your system are undone.

After you restart, follow the "Internet Explorer Troubleshooting" shortcut on your desktop to get more information.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917925

I disabled all spyware/virus protection programs

The ie7.log file was no help, because it didn't exist on the machine. I did do a search for it too. The only file I had was ie7_main.log - I tried to search within that file for the values referenced, and they didn't exist.

I tried the fix for Vgx.dll as well, no luck.

Tried to Google, didn't find a whole heck of a lot that wasn't already mentioned/attempted, but I did see somewhere that I should try to disable System Restore, which I did, and it didn't help.

Anyone have any suggestions on this?

-edit-

OK ie7_main.log is one of the possible files, apparently ie7.log isn't always created.

Back to look at it...

-edit 2-

Ok, I read that I could try to rename iexplore.exe to iexplore.bak before running IE7 install, that didn't work either.

Tried the stuff here, http://dotnet.org.za/pieter/archive/2006/10/20/Installing-IE7-RTM.aspx
no luck there either.

Attaching a log for now, no more time to deal with this atm. Will examine more later... (renamed to .txt since I can't attach .log files)

 

[madmatt]

What security suite software are you running?

Were any previous versions of IE7 installed previously (I see the log states IE6 is installed currently)?

I see that WGA validates correctly.

The only errors I see in the log relate to the XML update that is downloaded during the installation process. There are no other errors.

Is this desktop/notebook locked down in one form or another?

 

[kcnychief]

Sophos Antivirus is running. There are actually 5 machines in the location, 1 of them went off fine and the other 4 are having the error.

I tried to disable Sophos, turn off System Restore, and pretty much have nothing else running and it didn't help.

There were no IE7 betas, IE6 only on all of these PC's.

Software config is identical on all of them, not really sure what may be different on the one that it went through on.

There is an IE support option, I may look into that. Not a huge rush to get IE7 on the machines, but I still want to solve it.

 

[madmatt]

Did you disable the services for Sophos prior to installing?

 

[kcnychief]

I didn't at first, and I didn't have to on the one that it worked on.

But, I did try after it failed the first time. I tried disabling, even going as far as un-installing, no such luck.

 

[madmatt]

There must be something that is different between the one that worked and the four that didn't. Does anything come to mind?

 

[kcnychief]

Not off the top of my head, but I am going to compare some log files between the machines.

Software wise they are identical, the only difference is that only some of them have Quicken. Everything else is exactly the same.

I posted a brief quip in the MS NewsGroups too.

 

[American Zombie]

This may be a longshot but run either IeFix or the ie.inf file to make sure IE6 is installed correctly then try IE7 install.

 

[kcnychief]

Thanks for the tip AZ, willing to try anything at this point

-edit-

May also kill all services and try Safe Mode, not sure how reliable the installer will be there though.

-edit 2-

This also seems like it's worth a shot, a lot of the stuff I found referenced registry permission errors -

http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2006/09/04/739820.aspx

 

[j79zlr]

Is there an actual install log? I had issues before with Windows Update on my work Win2k PC, and I had to change the permissions on some registry keys in order to install. The keys affected should be in the log. If you can't find it, sort \Windows\System32 by last modified

 

[kcnychief]

The only logs referenced are actually in the Windows directory, and that is the one I attached.

However, after examining that a bit more carefully, I found that error hr=0x00000000 usually points to registry access issues. So I may play with the tool I listed above.

I will take a peek in the SYSTEM32 as well, thx

 

[American Zombie]

Are you trying to install on machines you wanted to block windows update?

 

[kcnychief]

Are you trying to install on machines you wanted to block windows update?

No, I haven't bothered with any of those measures.

-edit-

OK, Safe Mode didn't work either, although I tried just normal Safe Mode without networking - I did uncheck to download and run MST and other updates though.

-edit 2-

Is there an actual install log? I had issues before with Windows Update on my work Win2k PC, and I had to change the permissions on some registry keys in order to install. The keys affected should be in the log. If you can't find it, sort \Windows\System32 by last modified

Just wanted to confirm, nothing in SYSTEM32 related to the installation. I just had another install fail, chccked by date/time modified. Only relevant file anywhere on the system to the best of my guess is the one I already referenced in C:\WINDOWS.

 

[LordOfLA]

It may help to run through hijack this and give us a list of all installed software on the machine(s) having issues installing IE as well as all normally running processes.

 

[kcnychief]

Thanks for the tip AZ, willing to try anything at this point

-edit-

May also kill all services and try Safe Mode, not sure how reliable the installer will be there though.

-edit 2-

This also seems like it's worth a shot, a lot of the stuff I found referenced registry permission errors -

http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2006/09/04/739820.aspx

Tried to repair IE6, and the SubInACL tool, neither one worked.

Here is the latest log, looks the same really..

http://www.djrcs.com/projects/ie7/ie7_main.txt

-edit-

HJT log, pretty clean

http://www.djrcs.com/projects/ie7/hijackthis.txt

 

[American Zombie]

That ie7main file is not the log file as the contents are different then ie7.log has in it. Do you get the error message at the end of install and it tells you to reboot or is it after reboot?

Maybe look for the ie7.log file BEFORE you reboot as maybe after reboot yours is being deleted when the installer cleans up. I was able to find the log file before reboot.

Start > run > %windir%\ie7.log

Here is what my log file had in it:

 

[kcnychief]

I know the ie7.log file is the file that is referenced in most articles, but I also read somewhere that ie7main could be an alternative file/log.

I get the error at the end of the install and then it tells me to reboot, but I don't have to right away. I didn't think to look before rebooting for the log file, that would make sense that it could possibly get deleted when the installer does the cleanup. Great idea, I'll give that a shot.

Newsgroup post over at MS hasn't led anywhere special, except for 5-6 replies telling me to just switch to FF

 

[kcnychief]

OK, I got this figured out.

First off, AZ, the log wasn't on the machine even before I rebooted - odd indeed.

What I thought I would try to do was to install the MSXML LITE update manually before trying to install IE7, since that was the only part that failed. So I downloaded it and went to install, and guess what - error.

The error is what tipped me off though. The error said "you don't have sufficient access to update Windows, please contact your Administrator"

I was like - huh? I was logged in as a local administrator (not as myself, the user of the actual PC). But then it hit me...

There are 5 PC's in the location I'm working on. The ONE PC that it worked on, that person is classified as a Domain Admin (more on that in a minute). So I logged in to each of the PC's with his account, and IE7 installed flawlessly.

This network has been a nightmare wrt to weird **** ever since I started working for them about a year ago. Thank god it's almost time to replace their server, where I am going to re-do everything from scratch. I inherited this organization from someone who didn't have a flying clue how to do anything. Granted, this particular setting isn't really a bad way of doing things, just really odd. Everyone is local admins, they can do all the things they need including Windows Updates...

Oh well, just glad I fixed it. Thanks to all for the replies.

 

[madmatt]

After all that...