Good Afternoon All!
We are working on upgrading all Windows 7 clients to Internet Explorer 11, and there has been much debate about the best way to go about it. Since IE11 requires a restart for the changes to take effect, we have been bouncing back and forth on how to push
this out. Out of 1900+ W7 computers, we have nearly 900 that still do not have IE11.
Many of these computers are in our manufacturing department, and they have users on them 24/7, so forcing a restart is not a good idea. One idea we had was to push the install with /NoRestart on the MSI arguments, then just send emails saying we are going
to restart their systems one night. That was good, but why email every user when about 10% shut their computers down nightly and maybe another 20% will restart within the week?
I have a VBScript that I use for other purposes to check if a user is logged in (local or RDP), and restart if no users are on. I can put a list of computers in an input file and run the script any time of day. This led me to my next idea.
I know when IE11 installs, you can go to "Add/Remove Windows Components" from appwiz.cpl, and you will see "Internet Explorer 11" but it is unchecked. From what I have seen, having IE11 listed here and unchecked is a sure-fire way to
tell a restart is pending for the changes to take effect.
My question based on this... where can I query to see if "Internet Explorer 11" is shown and is unchecked in the "Add/Remove Windows Components" screen? I have been looking through the registry on a test computer, but I cannot seem to
find anything. If I can find this somewhere, my idea is to push IE11 out, run my script for a few days to check for no users and restart, then after a week or so, see which computers have not yet restarted. I would then have a good, shorter list of computers
that I can email the owners for.
Does anybody know where I could find where the "Add/Remove Windows Components" settings can be found? How can I check for "Internet Explorer 11" and being unchecked?
I would sincerely appreciate any help here. This would save my management and users a lot of heartache. Thank you in advance!
Eric
P.S. If there is a better forum for this question, please let me know and I will move it.