(Fwd) Installing IE 5.01 SP1 Can Break Office 2000 Help

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

1. ========== NEWS AND VIEWS ==========
(contributed by Paul Thurrott, thurrott at win2000mag.com)

* INSTALLING IE 5.01 SP1 CAN BREAK OFFICE 2000 HELP
After I issued a warning on Friday that Microsoft hadn't properly 
tested Internet Explorer (IE) 5.01 Service Pack 1 (SP1), I quickly 
received word from many readers that this release breaks the Help 
system in Office 2000 and Office 2000 Service Release 1a (SR1a) on many 
systems. I haven't been able to nail down which systems, exactly, are 
immune to this bug, but it appears to be certain Windows 98 systems. 
Those readers who wrote in and my own experience indicate that this 
problem affects all Windows 2000 systems. "Help requires Microsoft 
Internet Explorer 3.0 or greater," the warning reads when you try to 
run Office Help after installing IE 5.01 SP1. "You can install the 
latest version of IE from www.Microsoft.com."
   Although this problem doesn't come as any surprise necessarily, it's 
still disheartening to realize that Microsoft isn't doing what it needs 
to do to ensure that bug fixes don't introduce their own bugs. 
Therefore, with some reluctance, I'm advising users against downloading 
and installing IE 5.01 SP1, unless you're comfortable with a little 
Registry editing (see "Here's the IE 5.01 SP1 Fix," below). 
Unfortunately for Win2K users, upgrading to IE 5.01 SP1 is the only way 
to upgrade Outlook Express and other nonbrowser IE components to IE 5.5 
levels. The more heavily tested IE 5.5, which Microsoft will release 
later this week, should contain all the IE 5.01 SP1 fixes, but Win2K 
users will be able to upgrade only the Web browser with that release. 
None of the other IE components are upgraded in IE 5.5 if you're using 
Win2K.
   The strange saga of IE 5.x really has me wondering about version 
numbers, incompatibilities, and other issues. For some reason, 
Microsoft has an insane numbering system for IE, something that began 
with the original release of IE 5.0. For example, the IE version number 
in Win98 Second Edition (SE), released in May 1999, is 5.00.2614.3500. 
You might think that the build number is 3500 or maybe 2614. Instead, 
the build number is 1435, which you get by combining the last two 
digits of the first four-digit section with the first two digits of the 
last four-digit section. When Microsoft released Win2K with IE 5.01, 
the build number was 2000 (5.00.2920.0000). But IE 5.0 SP1 "upgrades" 
this build number to 0310 (5.00.3103.1000), which makes absolutely no 
sense.
   The IE team has a history of not properly testing products, a 
problem I've been documenting for years. When Microsoft melded IE into 
the Windows user interface (UI), I railed against the company for 
letting such buggy technology get its tendrils into the core of the OS. 
A point release designed to fix problems with the original has, almost 
instantly, followed each major IE release, and IE has had an amazing 
array of security and bug fixes, which now seem to be issued regularly. 
With IE 5.01+, however, these problems have reached a new low. Win2K 
users can't use the IE 5.5 installer to update Outlook Express; 
instead, they can update Outlook Express only through IE 5.01, which 
wasn't properly tested, or Win2K Service Pack 1 (SP1), which hasn't 
shipped yet. Meanwhile, Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me), which 
Microsoft recently released to manufacturing, ships with a prerelease 
version of IE 5.5--build 3401 rather than 3406, which is the final 
version.
   As reports of incompatibilities between IE 5.01 SP1 and Office 2000 
swept across the Web this weekend, the finger pointing began between 
the two Microsoft teams responsible for the products. For the users, of 
course, who caused the problem isn't important. Getting it fixed is. 
Perhaps it's not coincidental that this problem should arise between 
two products that have been so poorly tested. Both IE and Office--
especially its service releases, such as Office 2000 SR1--have poor 
histories of reliability. And for some reason, this bug doesn't appear 
on every IE 5.01 SP1 install, although it does appear almost 
universally on Win2K Professional.

* HERE'S THE IE 5.01 SP1 FIX
This weekend, I was able to reproduce the Internet Explorer (IE) 5.01 
Service Pack 1 (SP1) bug on Windows 2000 systems with both the original 
Office 2000 version and Office 2000 Service Release 1a (SR1a), and I 
posted the first warning about IE 5.01 SP1 to the WinInfo Web site 
(http://www.wininformant.com/) at that time. Numerous readers have 
written in with a Registry fix for the problem, which I describe below. 
IE 5.01 SP1 seems to write the wrong build number information to the 
Registry. In Windows Me, the IE version number is 5.50.4134.0100, so 
the system writes a value of 54134.0100 to a specific location in the 
Registry. This information helps applications determine which IE 
version you have. When you install IE 5.01 SP1, however, the system 
writes invalid information to this part of the Registry. The IE version 
in SP1 is 5.00.3103.1000, so the value 53103.1000 should be written in 
the build number location. Instead, IE 5.01 SP1 writes 5.00.3103.1000. 
When Office Help starts up, it thinks you're using an older IE version.
   Here's the fix, which you should try only if you're familiar with 
editing the Registry.
   1. Launch regedit.exe.
   2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet 
Explorer, and find the Build key. You'll see that its value is 
5.00.3103.1000.
   3. Change this value to the correct value of 53103.1000 (I've seen 
fixes on the Web that suggest different values, but this appears to be 
the correct one).
   4. Close regedit.exe. After you make this change, Office Help will 
work (you don't need to reboot your system).

   If you don't want to hack around in the Registry, which is 
completely understandable, Microsoft will probably reissue IE 5.01 SP1 
sometime soon. And why not? In the crazy world of Microsoft bug fixes, 
we've come to grudgingly expect this type of thing. IE 5.01 SP1a, 
anyone?

------- End of forwarded message -------
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Associate Director
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org
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