Why Windows 7, 8 Users Must Upgrade to Internet Explorer 11

On Tuesday (Jan. 12), Microsoft officially phased out support for Internet Explorer versions 7 through 10, which means the company will no longer release security update patches for the browser. People who do not use the Microsoft Web browser may have ignored this news, but a warning from a Microsoft employee revealed that PC owners should be paying attention to what IE version they have installed.

Pat Altimore, a developer consultant in the Microsoft Services Premier Developer group, posted an update to his blog last Friday (Jan. 8) which explained that users running older operating systems including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 — even if they don't use Internet Explorer, but have it on their computers — need to update to version 11, because without IE 11 installed, some security-based Windows components will not be serviced. Those parts include the rendering engine for JavaScript / HTML, the Web Browser control and Windows' Internet Protocol Handler, and those features aren't included in any system updates that operating systems receive.

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In his blog post, Altimore explained how other programs on your computer that access the internet rely on these controllers, handlers and rendering engines to access the internet, so if your PC isn't running Windows 10 and cannot use Edge, it is relying on the technologies included in Internet Explorer. Fortunately, Microsoft makes it easy to get the latest and most secure version of the Web browser, and we've got step-by-step instructions to keep you up to date: