"The system cannot find the file specified" error on WinFLP

[NAKADZI]

Good time of day. After installing Legacy Update v1.11 on a freshly installed Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs [Service Pack 3], I get the following error when I try to open Legacy Update ↙

🤔 I assume that this is because I didn't check the "Internet Explorer" box when installing WinFLP:

⚠ But nevertheless, a working Internet Explorer is present on the system:

Is the problem an outdated version of Internet Explorer?

[kirb]

If IE weren’t found, it would usually be a “class not registered” error. I’ll see if I can reproduce and look into it.

[xxmichibxx]

Somehow, I'm getting the same issue with Windows Server 2003 Standard SP2 x86. I didn't install the system, so I can't tell if Internet Explorer was installed in the first place.

[steviator]

It's nothing to do with internet explorer, I have IE installed and I'm still getting the error. It's a bug in legacy update that they don't care about.

[kirb]

@steviator, refer to my initial reply: “I’ll see if I can reproduce and look into it.” This will be looked into in time, but I haven’t gotten to it yet.

[xxmichibxx]

I did some tests. With a clean installation of Windows FLP with IE, installing Legacy Updater works just fine. Not installing IE initially results in the following error, which is shown in the event log:

So what we can do on this point? According to the readme:

• Optional components (like IE) cannot be installed after setup has completed
• The Internet Explorer 7.0 installer will not work unless the Internet Explorer 6.0 optional component is installed during setup.

So lets try installing IE7 anyway. Downloading (WinWorld), installing, rebooting then installing Legacy Update works fine. I tried this with IE8 too, but was unable to install due to failing to download required files. AFAIR, there is no offline package for IE8, unless you build it using the IE Admin Kit.

I would recommend adding an additional check for an IE installation and installing IE7 after SP3 installation if not present. To install IE7 silent (with requires a reboot after installation), Legacy Update could use the following setup paraments: ie7_5700__x86_en.exe /quiet /update-no

I still don't know why I had this issue on W2K3 Standard. I hope this helps with further investigation.

[kirb]

Thanks so much for testing, that makes complete sense now. We could add a check for whether iexplore.exe exists, or just catch the error and show our own more useful error message (we already have one for Windows 7+ where IE can be fully uninstalled).

[kirb]

Fixed in 1ef4d5c - we now handle the specific error and display a more specific message saying that IE needs to be installed. The dialog isn’t exactly correct, because it tells you to “Use Optional Features in Control Panel to install it before using Legacy Update”, but there is no Optional Features wizard in XP Embedded. There is no supported way to install IE6 on XP Embedded if it was installed without it, though.

If you still get this error after force installing IE6, it probably wasn’t done correctly, because either the COM objects aren’t correctly registered, or it can’t figure out where to find iexplore.exe.

You can install IE7 or 8 though - here’s IE8 for XP. ~~Use Legacy Update to update to SP3 first, as this “offline” installer still tries to go online to download an update that no longer exists.~~ This actually doesn’t work with that download link, it wants to install the latest dynamic installer cumulative update (KB2909921) first, which downloads fine but fails to run for whatever reason. So I would say indeed, you need a full IEAK-integrated version of IE7 or 8. The IE7 RC build linked above works, and then you can update to IE8 with LU.