Microsoft used the January 2007 security update to induce users to try Internet Explorer 7.0 whether they wanted to or not. But after discovering they had been involuntarily upgraded to the new browser, they next found that application incompatibility effectively cut them off from the Internet.
For some people who ran Microsoft's January 2007 security and products updates, including me, clicking on the familiar gold shield icon was not much different from getting suckered into opening an e-mail message infected with a virus or a worm Trojan.
That's because unless you checked before you clicked, you were unwittingly giving permission for Microsoft to install Internet Explorer 7.0. And in too many cases, users are experiencing application crashes or Web site incompatibilities that are rendering IE 7 and your computer useless for Web browsing.
I wasn't duked into installing it and have already selected to never have it display during the update process from Automatic Updates and on Microsoft Update.
MS duking people into installing something they don't want or really need; does anyone remember the WGA Notifications that was installed on countless systems during a monthly update, and boy wasn't WGA Notifications a "critical update" ~ being completely sarcastic of course.
I removed IE7 because it loaded so slow to the point in my views as if it wasn't actually meant for XP, and was just being forced upon the OS just for the sake of plugging security holes. Most notably I removed it because it had did something which hooked into ctfmon.exe (supposedly installed by MS Office) and simply running IE7 would cause ctfmon.exe to become resident which then in turn caused a system slowdown just clicking the Start button.
ctfmon.exe is easily blocked in XP Pro via 'Administrator Tools->Local Security Policy' however simply removing IE7 doesn't get rid of the changes made.