Microsoft KB Archive/328748

= OFFXP: Microsoft Does Not Recommend Installing Office XP from a Web Server =

Article ID: 328748

Article Last Modified on 12/4/2007

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Office XP Professional Edition
 * Microsoft Office XP Small Business Edition
 * Microsoft Office XP Standard Edition
 * Microsoft Office XP Standard Edition for Students and Teachers
 * Microsoft Office XP Developer Edition
 * Microsoft Access 2002 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft Excel 2002 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft FrontPage 2002 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft Outlook 2002 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft Word 2002 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q328748



SUMMARY
This article describes the risks that occur when installing Office XP from a Web server. Microsoft does not recommend that you perform a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) installation of Office XP from a Web server as described in the &quot;More Information&quot; section of this article.



MORE INFORMATION
When you install Microsoft Office XP from a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), native support of the Windows Installer is used. When Windows Installer copies files from an HTTP location, Windows Installer uses Wininet to download the file to the temporary Internet files cache before copying the files to their actual installation location. The temporary Internet files cache is not secure and the client system may be compromised. This risk may exist for all Microsoft Installer (.msi) files installed from a URL, and is not specific to installing Office XP.

Note Installing Office XP from an administrative installation point, hosted on a file server and accessed through a Universal Naming Convention (UNC) or drive alias is not subject to this security issue.

