IE8 blocks at Windows Update

Whether you bothered to download the latest IE 8 beta or not I am sure it has not slipped by unnoticed. If fact there was quite a noise about the pending and subsequent release, many are please as they say its only beta, but to my mind in runs more like an alpha. I have read various places that they have had problems. well I can tell you I have had quite a few, indeed it hardly runs at all without a crash or two and then I'm unable to close it down. I running it in IE7 Emulation mode which seems to work OK. This defeats the whole idea though, but I will persevere. It was quite funny to come across others who had the same problem and then to realise that the IE 8 team must have forgotten to mention the public release of their beta.

Internet Explorer 8, the just-previewed browser from Microsoft Corp.,blocks access to the company's Windows Update service, company representatives have confirmed.

Users who try to reach Windows Update with Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Beta 1 are instead greeted with a message stating, "To use this site, you must be running Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 or later."

IE8 Beta 1 was releasedWednesday after an unveiling at Mix08, the Web developer conference Microsoft hosted last week in Las Vegas. The preliminary version runs on Windows XP,Vista, Server 2003 and Server 2008.

Users were understandably confused when IE8 refused to call up Windows Update. "After updating my IE7 to IE8 today, I tried to update my Windows Vista by visiting the Windows Update Web site, but then I was redirected to an error page," said a user identified as "zkyboy" on a Microsoft support newsgroup. "Why? Is IE8 not the latest version browser?"

Vista SP1 up to 86% faster 

Is Vista SP1 really the shot in the arm your Vista system needs? We've spent many hours strapped to our benchmarking system in a caffeine and pizza fuelled haze to uncover these very interesting results.

source: apcmag.com

We tested Vista:

• as it comes out of the box (RTM -- or "release to manufacturing")
• as it comes out of the box, with all Windows Update patches applied ("RTM patched)
• with the final SP1 service pack applied

Testing Setup

Although Vista SP1 has many documented improvements, we aimed to test a particular scenario which has proved to be a major problem for pre-SP1 users: file copy speed, particularly over a network.

Our scenario was a home user running Vista Home Premium on a fast, low-latency network with decent PC hardware. All file copy tests were initiated from the main machine.

Our test machines were:

• Main machine - an Acer Veriton 7900 Pro (Intel Core 2 Duo 6700/4GB RAM/ATI RADEON X1950/2xSATA-II HDD) running Windows Vista Home Premium
• A second machine running Windows Vista Home Premium (connected via gigabit Ethernet for file copy tests)
• A third machine running a fully-patched Windows XP SP2 installation (connected via a dedicated gigabit network to two remote systems).

Each system used the latest available vendor (non-Microsoft) drivers and the November release of DirectX. No modifications were made to the operating system, so as to represent as closely as possible the configuration of an OEM machine.

We uses two test file batches – the first was a single 2.5 GB ISO, and the second was 2.5GB of small files (over 300 MP3s). Each file batch was copied to a remote destination (write), and then written back across the wire to the test system (read/write).

The file copy destinations were:

• the second hard drive in the main testing system
• a SanDisk Cruzer Micro 8GB USB flash drive
• the remote Vista system
• the remote XP system.

File copies were timed from the time “Copy” was clicked to the time the copy shell disappeared.