Chris123NT's Blog

I couldn’t believe this when I saw it, but it’s true.  Internet Explorer 8 is fully removable in Windows 7 build 7048.  I believe this fully squashes the case that the EU has against Microsoft?

As you can see in the above screenshot there is a new entry for Internet Explorer 8, if you uncheck it, IE8 will be removed from the operating system.  Want proof?  Try it for yourself:

Here are some instructions courtesy of Bryant

1. Enter the Control Panel and look at “All Control Panel Options”
2. Click “Programs and Features”
3. In the left sidebar, click “Turn Windows Features On or Off” (you will be thrown a UAC prompt if you elevated UAC)
4. Wait for the list to load.
5. Look for Internet Explorer 8 in the list and uncheck it.
6. Click OK. You will see a prompt notifying you of a reboot.
7. The machine will reboot once, configure things, and reboot again.

As you can see above, currently it just deletes iexplore.exe, which I hope will be revised in future builds, but all references to IE are removed from the OS (see second shot), so my bet is that deleting these files would not harm anything, but then again I could be wrong.

So there you have it, step in the right direction for Microsoft?  And a quick solution to the EU’s argument against them?  Time will tell.