Programmatically check if the installed version is the latest version of IE or not

[rahul.s9]

Hello all,

Can someone please let me know how can i check programmatically (in
C++) or through some registry keys if the IE version installed is
the latest version or not ?

thanks
rahul

 

[Rob ^_^]

Hi Rahul,

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

Regards.

 

[rahul.s9]

Thanks but i still want to programmatically figure out whether its the
latest version or not

 

[Rob ^_^]

Hi Rahul,

Have a look at this key, You should have an entry for IE, but there are many
variants as MS offers browser customizations.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components

This key is used by windows update.

Regards.

 

[rahul.s9]

Thanks Rob,
that key has loads of information and how can i make out if the IE
installed on my machine is the latest version or not ??

if you can please elaborate your answer

thanks again
rahul

 

[Gary Smith]

What exactly do you mean by "the latest version?" The latest version
available for XP is arguably the IE 7 beta. If you don't count betas,
it's IE 6 SP2. For Windows 2000, it's IE 6 SP1. What are you trying to
accomplish, and what are you going to do if what you find is not the
latest version?

 

[Rob ^_^]

Hi Raul and Gary,

Elaborating on what Gary said - yes there are some issues in determining the
'latest' version. As I also said there are also custom versions that MS
distributes with different Branding.cab files - I think there was an article
about the EU requiring a special XP version (XP N) without certain windows
components.

The registry key that I supplied you with was from this KB article

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=318378

If you browse under that key you will see a number of UID values for various
windows and IE components.

I am guessing that a more eloquent solution is to do an IE version check in
your application setup and to advise your clients of the minimum version
requirements. If you are doing a web download deployment of your app you can
read and test the UserAgent string to determine the clients IE version. Do a
google on 'UserAgent'.

Regards.

 

[Daniel Crichton]

Rob wrote on Tue, 9 May 2006 16:52:10 +1000:

Hi Raul and Gary,

Elaborating on what Gary said - yes there are some issues in determining
the 'latest' version. As I also said there are also custom versions that
MS distributes with different Branding.cab files - I think there was an
article about the EU requiring a special XP version (XP N) without certain
windows components.

I think you can safely ignore XP N - apparently less than 2,000 copies have
been sold, and it breaks applications that rely on components of Windows
Media Player.

Dan

 

[Jon Kennedy]

See this article for possible help:

Determining Which Version of Internet Explorer You Are Using
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];164539