Microsoft probes IE8 dll AWOL hell Microsoft has said it is investigating a niggling problem with an Internet Explorer 8 update that's disabling a number of Windows XP machines. Admins and users are reporting here that after they installed an IE8 patch on PCs running Windows XP the machines were unable to boot Microsoft's browser. One Reg reader contacted us …
Internet Explorer was deservedly ignored in favour of other browsers in the past, and I would argue that IE9 is still not up there with Firefox or Chrome yet.
However, it is a big improvement on the last few versions, and I think Firefox is going downhill, to the point where I now use Chrome as my main browser.
My point is, I'm not recommending using Internet Explorer, but I do recommend keeping an eye on it (discourage counting it out entirely, if you prefer to look at it that way). The browser market *may* change to the point where it becomes a candidate for the best browser, and if you ignore it just because it *used to be* crap/it's IE/it's Microsoft/insert reason here, you might end up missing out in future.
Agreed. Unfortunately this aspect goes double for Microsoft; it wouldn't be the first time where they started with a product which was plain out bad only to eventually manage and turn it into something useful again.
You have to give 'm credit for that achievement IMO, its just too bad that many people already lost interest completely due to the often poor start.
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Missing out on features that make the browser more pleasant, helpful or otherwise better.
I see what you're getting at and yes, there are much more important things in life,. But why limit yourself to an inferior browser (this is all hypothetical, I have not said that IE is better than the other browsers, just that, if it continues to improve and if Firefox and Chrome lose their momentum - entirely possible - it may become the best browser in the future) just because of old prejudices.
I care about this mostly because I work as a web developer and it has a huge impact on my work. I make the assumption, rightly or wrongly, that folk hanging round a site like the Register and taking the time to post in the forums care about these things more than the average user, some to a greater extent than I do and others to a lesser extent...
Disabling XP machines, gets to the user logon then stops with a missing iertutil.dll warning and says unable to load explorer. Once the file is restored following one of the various prpcedures outlined in the thread IE8 may or may not be in a working condition and may require a re-install to get it working.
My first thought was that it could possibly be a false positive from antivirus software, but I'd guess it's more likely to be a failed malware infection attempt that causes to dll to not be installed/updated correctly during the patching process
The problem is that although I have been using IE8 on my XP rig (a $10K Aus one btw, waiting for W7 to get out of beta stage which should be in about 12 months from now)for a year the folks at Redmond (who supposedly know a fair bit about your system when they post updates) insist that I upgrade to IE8 on the update page.
Being a relaxed chap after a few months without W update issues (fool, fool, fool...) i figured wtf, just update the buggah and install over the top...
Oops...
Reboot took me right back to the glory days of Windows ME daily reinstall fun...
After a messy but fluky sysrestore (the 3rd attempt I think) I finally got back to scratch...and hid the W update prompt for IE8 for ever...
Still good to see that tradition prevails and Redmond can still fu.k you over by insisting you install something you already have installed.
As I said, maybe 12 months and I might...just might... try W7 (or vista SP 4 as it should be called)
I noticed many upgrades break shit over the years.
Most get's mitigated.
IE8 forced.
Somehow AVID fixed their shit? Maybe...Sometimes
You whine about IE6 on the web, WE whine about IE6 needs to run some hardware.
We whine about the death of our BAND, BUSINESS, OR WHATEVER.
Sure you patch it eventually. What about the YEARS in between?
Are these lusers unable to install another browser to continue their p0r surfing?
And on a slightly different topic , how about dropping this politicall correct "spokesperson" cr@p. Its spokesman or woman. Can't reg's reporters tell the difference anymore or have they spent too long in the basement?
The interdependencies of the bloody DLL subsystems in Windows defy description. Missing browser DLLs can have impact WAY beyond the browser... wasn't this one of the big hoohas when Microsoft "tightly coupled" IE into Windows in the first place?
Either way, I'm not surprised that a missing IE DLL can nuke Windows XP.
Back in the day, I used Maxthon; it was running IE in the background as renderer, yes, but if any bugger would try to infect it, it would:
a) Fail completely
b) Infect Maxthon instead and crash it, keeping my machine stable all around, allowing the anti-virus to work it out, deleting any part being totally possible without borking the machine.
I found important to keep IE working, even though not using it. Now I run Chrome, but keeping IE ok remains important.
what about a business environment based on a standard platform?
what about the hundereds of machines support people look after, that are still cranking along with winXP and IE6 due to some retarded legacy app?
hell we've only just rolled out IE8, and have to keep IE6 published on citrix "just in case". in two places we've had to go the other way. leave IE6 on there and push IE8 over citrix...
things like this remind me why i don't read the comments most of the time. unimpressed - i had hoped for some light on resolving the issue, but no. obviously too much to ask.
All your suggestions of 'firefox memory leak' version nine million "we fixed it properly this time!", or boogle chrome "all your info are belong to us", or that snooty holier than thou feeling you get from running that effing public sesspool of openly raped sourcecode 'linux' can be treated with the contempt they deserve.
"i had hoped for some light on resolving the issue"
If you're the support professional (if that isn't an oxymoron) you imply you could already have found the answer already.
"that snooty holier than thou feeling you get from running that effing public sesspool of openly raped sourcecode 'linux'"
Be sure to keep that opinion in mind when you're rolling out next weeks 20MB anti virus update to the "hundereds" of machines running your favourite Microsoft toyware OS.
"If your only rebuttle is to churn out the old "windoze sux" attitude"
Well unfortunately it does suck. It has piss poor security, illogical component integration (see IE), is vulnerable to all sorts of attack vectors, uses far more CPU and memory than it should, has poor remote access - you either have to run one of the many 1-task utililities on your local machine or an entire VNC session just because MS can't be bothered to create a proper command line with access via ssh (no powershell doesn't count as a proper command line) - win32 is a lousy low level API , Posix is poorly supported (hello, can it even do fork() yet? No), the message passing paradigm is well past its sell by date for an OS that has designs on the server room , and its generally unreliable - even if Windows doesn't crash so much these days it still needs a reboot every few weeks. Its hardly 24/7/365.
Did I leave anything out?
Oh yeah , it costs a fortune.
Reported this to El reg MONTHS ago as it was happening with almost EVERY reinstall and got strenously ignored. Same response when reporting it to MS. Not seen so much of it of late but its still an arse when it does happen. Easilly fixed mind. It does also cause greif when it's done with the same bunch of updates that installs the dammed ballot screen, which loads, then crashes bitching about said DLL not being there. Easy fix win+r pull down the full IE8 install from another pc and run it.
Its just a pita and takes extra time to deal with.
This issue is likely to happen regardless of which browser you use to do you web browsing. I even found the problem on a PC where the user had (months ago) removed IE.
It doesn't seem to have any weighting if you are using IE6, IE7 or IE8... if you have IE on your PC, you will likely (at some point in time, unless Microsoft release a patch for their patch) come across this missing DLL issue. In every single case I have worked on so far, the user has had no interaction with installing an update for weeks. So I believe it to be a forced update of Microsoft's in an effort to ensure that ALL windows XP computers have IE8.
The fix is easy enough - whilst your PC is working (or if not, get access to a working PC), burn a copy of the iertutil.dll (normally found in the system32 folder) to a CD. I say CD because a flash drive is not going to be detected at this stage in the Windows boot procedure.
If/when you do have the error, press Ctrl+Alt+Del, and while on the "Applications" tab, go to File > New Task (Run...). Type in CMD and press enter (you may be bombarded with error messages while trying this - just dismiss them).
When the command prompt appears, put in your CD that you prepared earlier, type D: (or E: or whatever your ODD is) and press enter.
Type DIR and press enter to see the contents of the drive you are on. If you got the right one, you will see the iertutil.dll listed.
Type COPY IERTUTIL.DLL C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 and press enter.
If the file copied successfully, type SHUTDOWN -R and press enter. Wait for the computer to restart and your work is done.
My suggestion to EVERY Windows XP user is to burn this dll to a CD just as a precautionary measure... it could save you hours of work and $$$ if you had someone else do it.
Thanks Microsoft!
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