Ancile uninstalls IE11

[Former user]

Hi.

Since the last 1-3 versions, Ancile seems to affect Internet Explorer in such a way that my it reverts to IE8. This has happened at least 3 times already, and I couldn't figure out why.

Yesterday I installed some security updates from WU. I had previously (mere hours earlier) reinstalled IE11. But now I notice once again that after running Ancile, IE is back to 8.0.

I submit my last 2 logs. Maybe that will help you.

Thanks.

[Matthew Linton]

That's very strange. There's nothing in Ancile that should be uninstalling IE directly. Ancile does uninstall some updates that add Telemetry data collection to IE, but IE should still be left behind. If you want to continue to run IE (Not recomended), you can make the following changes:

• In "config.ini" change "DISABLEIE" to "N". This will prevent Ancile from disable the automatic updating of IE.
• From an Administrator command prompt go to "<The Ancile directory>\scripts\inetexplore" and run "disable11.cmd /U" to re-enable updating of IE 11.
• In a text editor, go to "<The Ancile directory>\data\updates\uninstall" and open "ancile_updateuninst.lst" in a text editor (like notepad).
• Comment out the following updates by putting a "#" in front of them.

3093983     MS15-106: Security update for Internet Explorer: October 13, 2015 [Suspected IE spying]
3139929     MS16-023: Security update for Internet Explorer: March 8, 2016 [Contains KB3146449 Windows 10 Nagging] [VERIFIED]
3146449     Updated Internet Explorer 11 capabilities to upgrade Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 [VERIFIED]

If you've already run Ancile on the system you will need to manually un-hide the above Windows updates and then manually run Windows update.

That will disable everything directly related to IE in Ancile. If IE still gets uninstalled after making the above modifications, I couldn't tell you what would be causing it.

[Mark T.]

Hi Matt. Mark again here (I finally created an account)

Don't get me wrong: I hate IE like everybody else. But it is intrinsic to Windows as a platform not just as a browser. I surmise IE11 is less worse than IE8. So it's my last-resort browser, as some stupid sites almost (or outright) force you to use it. Not throwing accusations, but is it not possible that uninstalling a specific IE-related KB 'breaks' (or corrupts) IE11, thereby reverting to IE8?

I'll go through the motions again, and submit another log with debug turned on. If there's another form of logging I can use concurrently, let me know so we can compare notes.

This could all be some weird coincidence, but after the 3rd time I'm getting suspicious...

Thanks. Mark T.

[Matthew Linton]

Yeah, my instructions were kind of a long shot since none of the things listed above should actually remove IE, but I'm at a loss to think what might be causing it. Unless there's some other update that effects IE 11 (which hasn't documented that behavior) and gets removed by Ancile, the changes listed above should be the only things in Ancile that alter anything related to IE.

A debug log might be helpful, and if there's anything that looks strange in the screen output you might want to paste that here to.

After you install Windows Is there anything else you're installing or running that may modify the system?

When I get a chance I'll try installing IE 11, running Ancile, and seeing if I have the same issue. I've completely removed IE from my Windows 7 VM (As much as you can remove it) so I don't thoroughly test that.

You may want to try posting something in https://voat.co/v/Ancile to see if anyone else is having the same issue. It's mostly used for me to post updates, so you may want to cross post in https://voat.co/v/technology/ to gain more visibility.

[Mark T.]

Well...

I ran Ancile prior to reinstalling IE11, then did that, and ran Ancile again. What I observed earlier is that after one of the reboots, I would see "Windows is finishing installing updates" (or something to that effect), and once logon would be complete, that's when I saw IE had reverted to 8.0.

The only difference this time, is that I ran Ancile 1.7. The problem occurred with versions 1.5 and 1.6, so maybe something has changed in codebase of 1.7, or it may have been just plain bad luck owing to another mysterious source...

I've rebooted many times since I reinstalled IE11... and (knock on wood) it seems to be holding. I'll let you know if the reversal happens again.

Thanks. Mark T.

[Matthew Linton]

Hopefully it was just bad luck. Thanks for the update