It is the Error Code 9C59 which prevents both IE 10 and IE 11 from installing. After reinstalling Win 7 and using clean, high speed broadband for updating the problem remains. Tomorrow I will look more into it.

If you are going to play the paranoia/hacking game then you have to apply it to everyone, not just the one company someone has called out in the news.
Malware and hackers have appeared from a wide variety of sources or means, so you are right - one would have to be paranoid about it everywhere.

Anybody who has watched the news on TV or who does a lot of current events type reading can know about the many millions of hackings happening literally every day from a lot of directions. Every major corporation has had numerous computer/internet security breeches and even the USA Defense Department has so nobody seems to be immune to it.
The way I look at it RIGHT NOW the biggest security problems going have been caused by Open Source software (and the OpenSSL thing continues to be a problem, it just isn't in the headlines) and the semi-open 'thing' which is Android which is used in FAR FAR more devices than Windows.

I agree and I believe that the reason is because there is less incentive to spend more effort on security issues in Open Source software.

Also, too many people are visiting websites which are high risk for being home of hackers or malicious software (such as those naughty "adult" ones that are so popular).

Another point is that too many professionals in IT or specifically game development are over-confident about the security of their stuff.

Hell, bits of Android are open source (sometimes after the fact) and yet every version out there right now [...] has had TWO large security flaws in it [...] which have only just been caught which has an impact on MILLIONS of devices WORLD WIDE, a large chunk of which will never see an update.

Open Source might well have it's advantages but I've never brought into the 'many eyes' security claims and Heartbleed seems to back that position up...

And what would you think it would have happened if it was proprietary? Do you think it would have been handled better? And for free?

Yeah, you might want to google 'heartbleed' to see what I'm talking about... and also why it's a problem still...

On that note I'm reminded of how Chrome was apparently the only major browser that treated revoked SSL certificates as if they were valid. So far every web browser I've used has something terrible wrong with it, so I wasn't especially surprised or upset, but that seemed light a pretty weird oversight.

Have you tried this. There are a few more links in the replies.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/forum/ie10-windows_7/error-9c59-when-installing-internet-explorer-10/49ee66a3-bed2-4d59-98b8-9dbfc14193a9

Your whole post is just anecdotal evidence. Also, I know what heartbleed is, I've had to patch servers because of it, that doesn't mean all open source software has more bugs.

Ah, the 'head in the sand' method, nice nice... but as you appear to be unaware of the problems;
Android Fake ID bug exposes smartphones and tablets
Android keystore stack buffer overflow

So, that's the 3 security flaws, all from 'open source' software thus 'caused by open source software' - not overly hard to follow

But Phantom, maybe I misinterpret this, but do you suspect that the security would be higher if software and protocols were not "Open Source"?

Nope, I don't suspect nor imply that; this is not a zero sum game, the same problem could have happened in a closed application - however it didn't and one of the key things that a lot of people who say that all software should be open source (and often should be GPL) cite is the increased security because of the 'many eyes' effect; unfortunately this has never been proven to be true - what you do get however is a vast amount of people who want to make 'new and shiny!' but don't maintain code, because maintaining is boring.

Can closed app have security problems? Of course.
But so can Open Source and this year the biggest flaws have come from that area.

And what would you think it would have happened if it was proprietary? Do you think it would have been handled better? And for free?

For free - yes, there is no advantage for someone to try and sell forward a solution, not when a competing product exists. Chances are if this had happened in the MS eco-system then it would have been patched and thrown out asap too.

Handled better - who knows; PR departments are known to make cockups.

Depending on the company and the people involved however it might not have happened at all; that's not to say it couldn't have happened, everyone makes mistakes and all that, but instead of the patch being submitted late on NYE and being pushed to release and throw out all over the world then, based on processes I've encountered, the code would have been reviewed and someone might have caught the problem and blocked it to be fixed before hitting mainline.

But might is the keyword here; people make mistakes and if the reviewer didn't catch it then the same thing could have happened.

Short answer is, we don't know however what we do know is that even the 'better' open source software (from a 1998 thing) isn't always secure either despite the 'many eyes' solution people are known to put forward.

On the "BIOS checking files": well yeah, the BIOS shouldn't do it, but if I recall correctly UEFI should be able to handle filesystems to some extent (since it can load operating systems directly without a bootloader), so I wouldn't be surprised if somebody made firmware that has filesystem checking as a feature.

Download speeds are another pet peeve of many (among other browser obstacles). Sometimes the download speed with Firefox or Google Chrome is much faster than IE. At other times it is the opposite. I am not that advanced in IT to understand why exactly this is. Anybody know? Rumor in the internet is that security measures slow downloads but I doubt that. How can that account for the differences in download speed across browsers? I am quite a fan of torrents, by the way, because usually I can multiply download speed.

In practice you'll find out that the server is the one usually capping you =P

Finding out that IE 11 still cannot play .ogg vorbis media, only exclusivly mp3, I stopped reading about it (I have created ogg media player in a day with only the official vorbis codec source). This gives me a feeling that Microsoft IE falls to tendencies of certain industry and market players in a large extent.

I recall perfectly the reason for this, originally support for Vorbis was going to be mandated in HTML5, but then several companies started complaining that Vorbis could have submarine patents (like MP3 had) and that as such it wasn't safe to implement.

It is the Error Code 9C59 which prevents both IE 10 and IE 11 from installing. After reinstalling Win 7 and using clean, high speed broadband for updating the problem remains. Tomorrow I will look more into it.

Are you absolutely certain that this is a clean, fresh install of Windows 7? Or have you done any customizations, installed third-party "power tools" (ugh!) or even (shock, horror) used a pirated version of Windows?

I'm asking because this is something that normally does not happen. You install Windows, take it for a trip to Windows update, and everything comes down fine, including whatever new versions of IE Windows Update is offering. This all indicates that the most likely cause of your problem is something irregular on either your Windows install or your net connection.

I have had problems where updates have refused to install, often during a large update however (post fresh install); normally a reboot and retry will fix it however.

Ah, the 'head in the sand' method, nice nice... but as you appear to be unaware of the problems;

Android Fake ID bug exposes smartphones and tablets
Android keystore stack buffer overflow

These weren't "caused by open source software", that's ludicrous. They were just bugs. If it had been proprietary code, they probably would never have been discovered.

Nope, I don't suspect nor imply that; this is not a zero sum game, the same problem could have happened in a closed application - however it didn't and one of the key things that a lot of people who say that all software should be open source (and often should be GPL) cite is the increased security because of the 'many eyes' effect; unfortunately this has never been proven to be true - what you do get however is a vast amount of people who want to make 'new and shiny!' but don't maintain code, because maintaining is boring.

Can closed app have security problems? Of course.
But so can Open Source and this year the biggest flaws have come from that area.

Actually, it has been proven to be true.

Depending on the company and the people involved however it might not have happened at all; that's not to say it couldn't have happened, everyone makes mistakes and all that, but instead of the patch being submitted late on NYE and being pushed to release and throw out all over the world then, based on processes I've encountered, the code would have been reviewed and someone might have caught the problem and blocked it to be fixed before hitting mainline.

But might is the keyword here; people make mistakes and if the reviewer didn't catch it then the same thing could have happened.

Short answer is, we don't know however what we do know is that even the 'better' open source software (from a 1998 thing) isn't always secure either despite the 'many eyes' solution people are known to put forward.

The whole point isn't that there's no bugs in open source software, it's that there's less.

I'll also say it one more time: Anecdotal evidence doesn't work. I could get a bunch of examples of bugs in proprietary software. That doesn't necessarily mean proprietary software is more buggy than open source software. You really need to stop pulling up random open source bugs and acting like they completely prove your point.