Internet Explorer 6 on Windows ME…

Last weekend I tried to update Internet Explorer from version 5.5 to version 6 on my dads Windows ME machine.

I am always anxious when installing something new or updated on his machine. This time did not disappoint me, it failed. I would just like to upgrade the machine hardware and OS to something more recent, but with all the special hardware and software installed on it for his visual handicap, I am not that eager to take on that project. Most of the time I am out of the country for work, so if anything would need a bit more time it would take weeks to finish. My dad, due to his handicap, relies on his PC to read news, books and stay in touch with friends and family.

The installer gave the very unhelpful message ‘Set up was unable to install all the components’, the helpful message would have been something along the lines of ‘Set up was unable to install the following components X, Y, Z because we suck at creating proper installation routines and we Microsoft still don’t understand Windows good enough to make it work properly’. That would have made much more sense…

Today I did a bit of searching on this issue, because it always nags at me when these kind of things just don’t work the way they should. It appears we were not the only one hitting this issue.

From the posts I found some people suggest to download the full installation of Internet Explorer 6 including Service Pack 1 (ie60sp1.exe) instead of only the downloading-installer (ie6setup.exe). Sadly enough from the Microsoft download site only the downloading-installer can be downloaded. Using Google I was able to find a number of sites where it could be downloaded, but I don’t trust the kind of sites I was redirected to. Normally the site Oldversions.com is the solution, but I could only find Internet Explorer 6.0 without the Service Pack. So I might download a version from one of those sites anyway and then first try the installation within a Virtual Machine to see it is a proper install kit or something more devious.

Microsoft’s Knowledge base has some articles related to the message ‘Set up was unable to install all the components’;
1. Err Msg: Setup Was Unable to Install All the Components
2. Error Message: Setup Was Unable to Install All the Components

If all goes well I can install it on my dads machine in two weeks time, since coming weekend my girlfriend and I are going to Paris. Hopefully the weather changes for the better, the way it looks now we are in for 4 days of rain…

To be continued….