IE8 Deployment Issues

We're attempting to deploy IE8 to finally upgrade our environment from IE6. However, we've hit a couple of issues and wondered if anyone else has had similar problems.

I've downloaded IEAK for IE8 and created a custom .msi for WinXP with our own corporate settings. Of note here is that I've gone for a handsfree installation with forced reboots.

I've then taken this msi and placed it into our software distribution share on our domain controller.

From here I've added the msi into the software installation section of our deployment group policy object, which is assigned to our domain computers group. So it's in the 'assigned' deployment state.

However, it seems that only some PCs are installing the package. The others give the message 'Installing managed software Internet Explorer', however they don't actually install anything. Here's the last few lines of ie8_main.log from one of the failing machines:

00:08.969: INFO:    |Finalize         >>> <[END]--------------------------------
00:09.000: INFO:    |Finalize         >>> CPageProgress::_ChangeState: Original Phase: 13
00:11.860: INFO:    REBOOT: required.
00:11.875: INFO:    REBOOT: User selected to reboot now.
00:11.922: INFO:    Installer return value: hr=0x0000f0f4
00:11.953: ERROR:   Setup exit code: 0x0000f0f4 (Setup has detected the system is missing one or more prerequisites required to install.).

Has anyone come across this before? The machines are for the most part up to date - they certainly have XP SP3 installed.

EDIT: Hrmm, I've gone and done a couple of checks, looks as though some of these machines potentially only have SP2. However, I was under the impression that IE8 should still install on SP2, is this correct?

EDIT2: Well it seems after pushing out SP3 to all clients, things started looking better. I first had to uninstall IE8 via GPO (seems that IE8 gets into some partially installed state with the original problem, and therefore will not install if a second attempt is made.). Finally, once SP3 was installed and IE8 "uninstalled", pushing out our install package via GPO once again resulted in a successful install.

I still can't explain the original issue preventing the install on SP2 however.

[End edits]

I should also add that we have not installed any betas - this is an upgrade directly from IE6 to IE8 final.

Any help would be great, thanks in advance!

It's related to KB923823 trying to install before IE does because you have left "Install Latest Updates" on when creating an IEAK install. Easy fix. When you do your IEAK custom install untick the option that asks to "Install Latest Updates" at the beginning of IEAK customisation. If you are on XP-SP2 and you have left the "Install Latest Updates" option on then it will attempt to install KB932823 before installing IE and this is when it fails. Alternetively, you can do a fleet update with security fix KB932823 before rolling out. If you have patch management this step isn't required.