I hate Internet Explorer and I want to uninstall it and remove all traces of it from my computer. Is it possible to achieve this? I run Windows XP for home. Thanks.
Windows uses IE for several tasks like My Computer as well as browsing. I think there is a way to remove it, but why not just use another browser as default and ignore IE? There are some web sites that simply won’t work in non-IE browsers, so you might want to keep it around for such emergencies.
This is a question that almost led to the breakup of Microsoft. Look up the antitrust case called “United States v. Microsoft”.
IE is so tightly integrated into the OS that I agree with Musicat’s suggestion, unless your religion forbids you to use a computer with IE on it.
No.
poo 
Oh, well. Thanks anyway guys.
George, I hope you understand that we’re not saying you need to use IE. You can use a different browser without actually getting rid of IE.
Someone did claim to be able to remove Internet Explorer from Windows. The concept brought out a lot of debate – people said it was impossible, because IE is too integrated into the OS, or at least ill-advised, because it’s needed for other components, which is what Microsoft claimed during EU hearings. But a number of people have done it, and it led to quite a an edit war – both sides grudgingly agree to say that the OS install has been butchered. FWIW, I did run my computer this way following the instructions for a while, and it was a kinda cool thing to do, but sometimes, I do need IE to browse. At any rate, if the OP is as crazy as me, here’s where you can read about it.
Oh yeah, that’s understood 
I use Firefox for everyday browsing. It’s just that I’ve got a couple of apps (Napster being one) which somehow seem inextricably linked to IE. In the last couple of days I’ve been getting tons of error messages which basically stop these apps from working. No idea what’s causing them, I think my computer might just be getting old. Anyway, in my frustration I started thinking about the feasibility of removing IE altogether but it sounds like it’s a pretty essential Windows component, so nevermind.
The IE executable is iexplore.exe. You could always delete that and see what happens.
There are Firefox extensions which mimic ie, saving you from opening an extra programme. I’ve never tried it with Napster, and haven’t had to use it for ages, but it always worked for the websites (primarily .gov domains) which only worked in ie.
I have IETab extension in my Firefox, but I’m pretty certain it needs IE installed to work. I imagine that others do too.
I hope you are good with a DOS box if you do that… iexplore.exe is Windows Explorer - what you use to access the file system.
Really? I thought they were two distinct programs–that Windows Explorer was explorer.exe.
They are. iexplore.exe is Internet Explorer. explorer.exe is Windows Explorer.
I need to get an eye exam… but still, there are many, many DLLs that do the heavy lifting of Internet Explorer - and which are critical to the functioning of Windows, so you can’t get rid of it all.
You need IE to access Windows Update, without which (arguably) you cannot keep your computer fully secure and stable - I’m not sure if Automatic Update requires IE, but that gives you less control of the process than you get if you use WU.
I agree with the others that said to just leave it in place, largely ignored, and use a different browser.
I’m not sure about that, but it saves you opening yet another programme, which can be a problem or older or slow computers, like the one George Kaplin was talking about.
iexplore.exe is more or less a “wrapper” around the actual web rendering “guts” of Internet Explorer (classically mshtml.dll and shdocvw.dll.) Simply removing iexplore.exe won’t do too much damage but there are other programs out there (Steam, for example) which are hard-coded to open IE for webpages instead of calling the user’s default web browser. So, you’d break those other programs.
Getting rid of mshtml.dll and shdocvw.dll will break a ton of stuff, and you really don’t want to do that.
There is a really easy way to completely divorce yourself from IE, which I’m surprised nobody has mentioned…
[spoiler]Go and live in a cave!
(c’mon - you thought it was going to be ‘get a Mac’)
[/spoiler]
besides, I don’t get what the issue is anymore. as long as you aren’t dumb enough to still be using Internet Explorer 6, you should be fine. IE 8 is pretty much as good as any browser in terms of security now.
and if the problem is that you’re “morally” opposed to the OS vendor embedding an HTML rendering engine into the OS, then don’t use any PC at all. 'cos OS X uses Webkit for more than just Safari, and the two major *nix desktop environments do the same.