KB976002 describes what operating systems will receive a choice of Internet browser and how this process will work. This will bring Microsoft into compliance with the much discussed demands of the European Union on this subject. Affected OS’s are:
- Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows XP Service Pack 3
- All editions of Windows Vista
- All editions of Windows 7
- Future versions of the Windows client operating system that are released within the duration of the agreement with the European Commission
Some more information on the process can be found on Stealth Puppy. I’ve not seen the update yet but it appears to be delivered by Windows Update. If you don’t have Windows Update enabled then I guess you don’t get a choice.
If you are running tightly controlled corporate PC’s then you’ll be glad to hear that you can prevent the update from being deployed via WSUS/ConfigMgr/etc. You can also use the registry, according to KB2019411 (and therefore group policy) to prevent the update from executing:
- Key: HKLMSoftwareBrowserChoice
- Value: Enable (REG_DWORD)
- Possible settings: Enabled = 1, Disabled = 0