What if I delete Internet Explorer?

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Hey guys,

On a Win 8.1 system that I plan to keep until EOL, I have not used IE for years.

What are the consequences of getting it off my system entirely?

Is it doing stuff in the background I am not noticing?

I am considering installing the Classic Shell on this and it comes with IE features I may never use, so may not need it to be part of the install.

Thanks again for your insight.

ASUS GL702VS 24GB RAM Intel Core i7 64 bit Win 10 Home 22H2 OS Build 19045.3693
Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.19053.1000.0
Not Win 11 eligible.

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You cannot uninstall IE, it is an integral part of the Operating System. You can remove the icon from the menu and the Desktop.
In Control Panel\”Turn Windows Features on or off” you can uncheck Internet Explorer 11, which will disable it in the GUI.
But it’s functionality is used by other parts of the Windows Operating System, so you cannot uninstall it.

Allow Open Shell Menu (formerly Classic Shell) to give you the classic menus (it also does the classic menu in File Explorer and some other Win7 look-alike things). It won’t matter about IE11, if you don’t use it.

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Razz

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Thanks PK – I had unchecked it in features previously, but was wondering whether I needed the component I noticed in the Classic shell .exe. Thanks for the link to a newer version too.

You are acing it as usual.

ASUS GL702VS 24GB RAM Intel Core i7 64 bit Win 10 Home 22H2 OS Build 19045.3693
Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.19053.1000.0
Not Win 11 eligible.

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MajofGeeks usually has the latest version too, if you want a source other than GitHub.

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Razz wrote:

What are the consequences of getting it off my system entirely?

As said by PK you can’t uninstall IE only disable. There are some file types that open only with IE and disabling IE will prevent you from using these file types, for example .CHM

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Razz

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Not to mention the Reading Pane is Outlook, which uses IE, like it or not, and I don’t think there’s any form of a switch.

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

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Razz

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Outlook hasn’t used IE since 2003:

Microsoft to Keep Word as Outlook’s HTML Engine

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ScotchJohn, The Surfing Pensioner

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That info’ kind of explains some of the features I’ve noticed missing from Outlook.

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B – thanks, I stand corrected.

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

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That’s interesting. So much of the Help functionality and Outlook would be compromised.

ASUS GL702VS 24GB RAM Intel Core i7 64 bit Win 10 Home 22H2 OS Build 19045.3693
Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.19053.1000.0
Not Win 11 eligible.

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