IE11 installation fails in WES7 at OOBE

Question

Hi,

do you have any idea what might went wrong in the following situation:

We have WES7 image (with most features included) where we want to add IE11. What we do:

1. Make IBW Image from answer file (with SkipUserOOBE/SkipMachineOOBE). Make ISO. Boot from it and finish IBW.
2. Switch to Audit mode. Disable UAC. Restart.
3. Check that all prerequisites for IE11 (from X19-26639.img) are installed.
4. Install IE11 from X19-26639.img (note that the binary is exactly the same as downloaded from MS site for usual IE11). Restart.
5. Run sysprep and switch to OOBE mode with generalization.

Then what happens: it boots with a current account without a problem. IE works. But every time when you create a new account and log in first time - at the stage "Personalized Settings" - Setting up personalized settings for: Web Platform Customizations we get the "IE Per-User Initialization Utility" crash.

IE Per-User Initialization Utility has stopped working. A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. blah blah blah.

On the same image the IE8 (default) and IE9 (installed in the same way as described above) works (logs on) perfectly. Every time when I try to install the IE10 or IE11 in Audit mode - the IE Per-User Initialization Utility crashes after OOBE in any new account first logon.

Even if I install the IE11 after OOBE (not in Audit mode), the IE Per-User Initialization Utility still crashes during the first logon of the new account. For already created accounts IE11 works without issues.

Any idea? I can provide my initial xml file if necessary.

Thanks in advance,

Nikolai

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WBR, Nikolai

Answer 1

How about this: after you install the custom IBW, then install IE11, then sysprep to create the master?

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www.annabooks.com / www.seanliming.com / Book Author - Pro Guide to WE8S, Pro Guide to WES 7, Pro Guide to POS for .NET

Answer 2

If you use x64 WES7, it's a known issue. The workaround for this is in the readme.htm that is copied to the DS when you install the template. ie4uinit.exe may crash during new user profile creation (when user logon for the first time)

• Workaround: delete ie4uinit.exe from %SystemDrive%/Windows/SysWOW64.
• Automate this process by: Launch command prompt as Administrator and run the following commands. You can use these commands in a script/batch executed as an Asynchronous Command in your WES7 answer file.

1. takeown.exe /F C:\Windows\sysWOW64\ie4uinit.exe /A (the Administrators group will become the owner)
2. icacls.exe  C:\Windows\sysWOW64\ie4uinit.exe  /grant  Administrators:F  (the Administrators group will get full access)
3. del c:\windows\sysWOW64\ie4uinit.exe

Answer 3

Hello bagira520,

thanks a lot for a clue what was wrong!

2everybody:

I've debugged a bit the ie4uinit.exe and found the exact place where it crashes. First of all - only the 32-bit version is affected. Unfortunately there is no way easily fix it (with key access limits or so), so I propose instead of complete removing that file, just use the one from IE9 setup. For me it works and does better than if I would remove it completely.

2 MS:

If you want to fix this problem, please check the first call of time64() function in DoWork() one. Right after you call the SetProtectedModeFolders() and CreateProtectedModeRegistry() functions you call the time64() to get the time and setup the "InstallDate" in HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SQM key. It looks like that you by mistake pass a pointer to 32-bit time_t structure. As a result the EBP is 0 after the time64 call and all the rest is jeopardized and app crashes.

Nikolai

P.S. To be honest I don't believe that somebody in MS even read it, but I did what I could. Dixi.

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WBR, Nikolai

Answer 4

ie4uinit.exe from 32-bit IE11 installation works as well. So, I guess the best fix is to replace C:\Windows\sysWOW64\ie4uinit.exe file by C:\Windows\system32\ie4uinit.exe one from 32-bit WES7 installation.

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WBR, Nikolai

Answer 5

agree with your opinion, NickViz. This issue doesn't happen in 32bits WES7 system, it happen only in x64. IE10 also has this situtation.

Answer 6

We see it on Windows Enterprise 7 SP1 64-bit, after updating from IE8 or 9 to IE11

Answer 7

I had the same problem with WES7 and I fixed it by running the following registry file during installation of WES7:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

; Remove IE 8 initialisation (Causes error "IE Per-User Initialization Utility has stopped working")
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components\{89820200-ECBD-11cf-8B85-00AA005B4383}]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components\>{26923b43-4d38-484f-9b9e-de460746276c}]

Both registry keys point to the 32-bit version of ie4uinit.exe under %SystemDrive%/Windows/SysWOW64.

In my opinion this is a cleaner solution than deleting a file and let registry keys still point to the deleted file.