I remember that there was initially something similar that went on with SP3 & IE7, but I know that at least you can now upgrade to IE7 after installing SP3. Whether or not you can remove it... I have no idea (but why you'd want IE6 over IE7 is beyond me, too). Now this SNAFU comes down the pike. Yay. The moral of the story seems to be to stay away from MS betas, boys 'n girls.

"A warning dialog will appear to alert users. 'If you chose to continue, Windows XP SP3 and IE8 Beta 2 will become permanent,' Maliouta said."

Even more heartening news on the IE8 front: the standards compliance that they're touting for the browser? Yeah, notsomuch. IE8 will again apparently use "compatibility mode" as the default for page viewing. At least that's what people are finding with beta 2. Surprised? Nah.

"This week, the promise was broken. It lasted less than six months. Now that Internet Explorer IE8 beta 2 is released, we know that many, if not most, pages viewed in IE8 will not be shown in standards mode by default."