Removal of Internet Explorer - Overview

Overview

While a major upgrade of Internet Explorer can be uninstalled in a traditional way if the user has saved the original application files for uninstallation, the matter of uninstalling the version of the browser that has shipped with an operating system remains a controversial one.

The idea of removing a stock install of Internet Explorer from a Windows system was proposed during the United States v. Microsoft case, and Microsoft themselves acknowledged that many users did not want IE. One of Microsoft's arguments during the trial, however, was that removing Internet Explorer from Windows may result in system instability.

The Australian computer scientist Shane Brooks demonstrated that Windows 98 could in fact run with Internet Explorer removed. Brooks made his work available as a freeware removal utility called IEradicator, which removes all versions of IE from all versions of Windows 9x. Another programmer named Bruce Jensen published a similar utility called "Revenge of Mozilla." Shane Brooks went on to develop more a more sophisticated program for Windows 98 and ME, marketed as 98lite, which turns IE, along with several other "mandatory" Windows components, into optional components that can be added or removed from the OS at will. He later created XPLite, which renders many parts of Windows 2000 and XP into optional components. Both of Brooks's programs can remove IE after the installation of the operating system.

There are other methods of removing IE based on modifying the Windows installation process so that IE is never installed in the first place. 98lite can be used in this way. A method developed by Fred Vorck manually alters the setup scripts for Windows 2000 to prevent the installation of IE. His process has been automated as a feature of HFSLIP. nLite and HFSLIP are automated programs that allow users to modify the Windows installation process, both to incorporate patches and updates and to exclude IE and many other Windows components from installation as desired.

Removing Internet Explorer does have a number of consequences. Some programs bundled with Windows, such as Outlook Express, and some basic Windows components, such as Help and Support, depend on libraries installed by IE in order to function. With IE removed, they may fail to work, or exhibit unexpected behavior. Several common 3rd party applications, Intuit's Quicken being a typical example, depend heavily upon the HTML rendering components installed by the browser. For this reason, most of the IE removal utilities offer the compromise option of removing large parts of IE while still leaving behind the HTML rendering engine or "IE core," which allows many of these 3rd party applications to function normally. Also, in versions of Windows before Vista, it is also not possible to run Microsoft's Windows Update or Microsoft Update with any other browser due to the service's implementation of an ActiveX control, which no other browser supports. In Windows Vista and Windows 7, Windows Update is implemented as a Control Panel applet.