My network team recently sent me a Nessus Scan for my Windows 2012 servers. On it is listed a 'critical' issue of 'Microsoft XML Parser (MSXML) and XML Core Services Unsupported'.  I checked the server and lo and behold there are some MSXML#.dll files in there for version 3 (in addition to version 6).

To clean up the report I'd like to remove the old version, but I can not find a method to do this.  It doesn't show up in windows features, uninstall programs, etc.  What is the proper way to remove the old version?  Simply delete the DLL?  Or something more involved?

These servers are Windows 2012 R2 Datacenter edition.  They were setup only a couple of months ago and while I don't recall installing old XML Parsers, it's possible it was auto installed or a coworker did it.

Thanks

H

Does Nessus say why it considers it a 'critical issue'?  I am generally hesitant to take the word of many of these scanning programs because they have to find something in order to be of 'value'.  I just installed a 2012 R2 system.  It has both version 3 and version 6 files.  If they were a 'critical issue', I am sure Microsoft would have done something about it. 

My first order of business would be to determine why Nessus thinks it is a critical issue.  Then if you still want to remove them, backup the system, and delete the files you don't want.

The 'critical' issue that our report claims is that it's 'out of support'.  If deleting the DLLs is all that's necessary, that'd be a great and simple fix.

Thanks

Hi H,

Since the result is evaluated by third party soft please get their help about the root reason, same time please keep the following recommended settings when we use he security soft on Windows Server.

Virus scanning recommendations for Enterprise computers that are running currently supported versions of Windows

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/822158

Im glad to be of help to you!

We had a recent Nessus scan and had this on multiple servers, ranging from Server 2008 R2, Server 2012 and Server 2012 R2.

The results were:

The remote Windows host contains unsupported XML parsers.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/269238
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj152146(v=vs.85).aspx

Path: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msxml4.dll
File version: 4.20.9818.0
XML Core version: 4.0 Post SP3 (KB2758694)
EOL date: 2014/04/12
EOL announcement: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/msxmlannounce
Supported versions : 5.10.2930.0 / 6.0 or greater.

On the 2008 R2 servers, there were at least two items listed in Programs and Features:
MSXML 4.0 SP2 (KB954430)
MSXML 4.0 SP2 (KB973688)

Uninstall works fine, but the DLL still remains in C:\Windows\SysWOW64.

The Server 2012 and Server 2012 R2 do not show anything to uninstall in Programs and Features.

If MSXML 4 is no longer support, how do you remove it?

Thank you.

Aaron