Microsoft is forcibly removing internet explorer from PCs

https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-removing-internet-explorer-from-pcs/

by loa_observer • 3 years ago

125 215 3 years ago

wired.com

Dwedit2• 3 years ago

If "mshtml.dll" is still there, and you can still instantiate instances of it, then MSIE is still there.

meltyness• 3 years ago

Invoke-WebRequest still depends on some of the internals too probably, but who knows?

jchw• 3 years ago

That was finally fixed, apparently in PowerShell 6.0, and now -UseBasicParsing is just a noop. Kinda crazy that it ever did this by default, especially considering PowerShell used to alias curl to Invoke-Webrequest, which could lead to surprise JavaScript execution. Definitely one of the worst gotchas in Windows PowerShell.

adzm• 3 years ago

Thankfully; there are entire (completely-local) applications designed around MSHTML.

djxfade• 3 years ago

Good

PreInternet014• 3 years ago

More correct albeit less clickbaity headline: recent builds of Microsoft Edge will uninstall any remnants of Internet Explorer from your PC and replace them with compatibility shims, so most legacy apps should continue to work as-is.

On Windows Server platforms, where IE11 is still inexplicably the default experience even in the most recent 2022 editions, you can still enjoy its full functionality, until you explicitly install 'Edge for Business'. Which you should.

SQueeeeeL• 3 years ago

If people have genuine use cases (or even simply have a preferred remembered experience experience for how something complicated works like an elderly person) I see no reason why they "should" upgrade, and why instead we shouldn't at least try to provide those users a mediocre amount of support.

For the average Grandma who just wants to use Hotmail and Facebook, learning Edge is actually a monumental undertaking

PreInternet014• 3 years ago

A genuine use case for IE11 on Windows Server platforms, which is what I was talking about, would mostly be 'masochism and a penchant for malware'.

If your average grandparent runs Windows Server, learning a new browser every now and then would be the least of their problems, IMHO.

tenebrisalietum• 3 years ago

No. IE needs to be renamed "ActiveX Web App Engine" and no longer be associated with the concept of an Internet browser.

Grandma can get an old iPad for Hotmail and Facebook, which is far safer, far less needing of support and what most people are using for those types of things anyway.

HideousKojima• 3 years ago

For the elderly, this is why:

https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-26/p...

I'd much rather Grandma have to learn to do something slightly differently than to hear about how Grandma had her bank account information stolen by some JavaScript malware.

For those with genuine use cases (I.e. ancient software that doesn't even work with the compatibility shims) I agree that there should be some way to run IE11 and older (and with only themselves to blame if they get pwned by ignoring the risks).

zdragnar• 3 years ago

Assuming Grandma is passably familiar with IE11 already for Facebook and Hotmail, I doubt the switch to edge is "monumental".

The most important items are all pretty close to their old positions. Odds are she is going to Yahoo to search for Hotmail or Facebook anyway.

jabroni_salad• 3 years ago

On my grandmother's computer I did the "install this site as an app" function for the sites she uses and they open up in frameless windows. The only browser controls available to her are back and refresh. Highly recommend.

michaelcampbell• 3 years ago

For the average Grandma who just wants to use Hotmail and Facebook, learning Edge is actually a monumental undertaking

I don't know what value of "grandma" is subject to being averaged, but this feels needlessly hyperbolic.

nimbius• 3 years ago

and replace them with compatibility shims

christ can you imagine the raw hubris in 1995 to roll this out and inexplicably make it not only uninstallable by the user, but a core and critical functionality of your entire OS such that any attempt to sidestep or evade it would be met with ruination? Its so bombastic the US Justice department hauls your pepsi sipping CEO in for a round of slouching, hand-waving antitrust litigation but somehow you manage to make it out by smirking through interviews and the grace of a nation thats just awakening to the dawn of the internet.

then fast forward 20 years later, your dumpster-fire web browser with all its lock-in and exploits still exists in the OS but the average user sees it as nothing more than a glorified blue icon to immediately download what has become your direct competitors far more competent and meaningful execution of browser software.

So you sunset the horrorshow that was IE in favour of your competitors browser engine to power your new browser but the haggard burro of a thing you call an OS is so inextricably encumbered by your blues-traveler era nineties myopia you now need a team of H1B's to start writing shims and the burger from lunch feels like its starting to come back up...

...now eight years later whatever frankenstein browser you convinced yourself was a good idea to build is still nowhere near as popular as your competitors, and thats after you added built-in gaslighting to your search engine to dissuade anyone from even searching for your competitors browser. you even came up with your own prefix to force links in your daytime infomercial of an OS to open directly in your new pet browser but people still dont want to use it. heck, you routinely reset their default browser and the only thing its managed to do is galvanize what by all indicators is a nearly white-hot detest for your pet chrome that has 45 seconds of unavoidable fullscreen lecture on first load, built in ads and tours, and a weird buy now pay later feature.

michaelt• 3 years ago

inexplicably make it not only uninstallable by the user, but a core and critical functionality of your entire OS

Well, it's kind of explicable: It was at about that time Microsoft rolled out HTML Help, so they needed an HTML rendering engine on every PC to be able to read the documentation.

Using a web browser as your native app's rendering engine is what all the cool kids are doing these days, so in a way they were just 15 years ahead of the curve.

PreInternet014• 3 years ago

can you imagine the raw hubris in 1995 to roll this out

Yup. And I can also imagine all the reasons why you dislike (to various extents, from mild to extreme hate) that. Yet, at the time, everyone was trying to do the exact same thing: capture the desktop. The mechanisms were different, but the end-objective all the same.

There is an alternate universe where we're all running JavaStations. I kinda like this version...

andrepd• 3 years ago

What an amazing read.

horsawlarway• 3 years ago

This is a very strange comment.

Personally... I absolutely understand exactly how they ended up in this situation. There are actually several good reasons to embed the browser into the OS, the top two easily understood ones are...

---

1. They've put a lot of work into the browser, and they've shared many components of it with other tooling. EX: Internet EXPLORER and EXPLORER the file system browser don't share their name by mistake. They're so similar I can load the same COM addin in both.

2. From a pure usability perspective, it makes a boat load of sense to prevent a user from accidentally uninstalling the last browser on the machine. When dealing with edge cases and possible support calls, making sure that the user has at least one application that can download files from the web is pretty damn reasonable. Safari is also not removable... for similar reasons.

---

Further - I think it's actually a fairly good credit to MSFT that they're bothering with shims at all, and are maintaining a good chunk of compatibility for applications that were written literally decades ago.

Both Google and Apples's approach to this would literally be: "We're so sorry, that's no longer supported and you're f*#$ed. Go upgrade, get your vendors to upgrade, or eat shit."

MSFT isn't writing shims because they still need them... they're writing shims because they have enterprise customers who want them, and they actually give a fuck about that.

dilippkumar2• 3 years ago

…you now need a team of H1B's to start writing shims…

This was uncalled for. You could’ve just said engineers.

For those of us in an unending battle with a broken immigration system every day of our lives for over a decade, this really rubs the wrong way.

quanticle• 3 years ago

    but a core and critical functionality of your entire OS such that any
    attempt to sidestep or evade it would be met with ruination?

Was Internet Explorer ever actually a core and critical part of Windows? Sure, Microsoft claimed that it was. But of course, they would have done that, given that the alternative was to admit that the Justice Department's argument was correct, and that Internet Explorer was being bundled in an anti-competitive manner to deprive Netscape of sales.

cuteboy19• 3 years ago

Describing the "nudges" as gaslighting is very funny indeed

mandeepj• 3 years ago

Hilarious! That's one way to describe history of three decades of that company.

justeleblanc• 3 years ago

Try to uninstall Safari from Mac OS or iOS, or Chrome from Android. Tell me how that works out for you.

dylan6044• 3 years ago

the average user sees it as nothing more than a glorified blue icon to immediately download what has become your direct competitors far more competent and meaningful execution of browser software.

One of the marketing style slagging quote, "Internet Explorer. The most used browser to download another browser." I remember the first time a buddy said that to me, and it has aged oh so well.

rodgerd• 3 years ago

christ can you imagine the raw hubris in 1995 to roll this out and inexplicably make it not only uninstallable by the user, but a core and critical functionality of your entire OS such that any attempt to sidestep or evade it would be met with ruination?

Elsewhere on HN: Everyone should be forced to install Chrome because I can't be bothered testing against Safari and Firefox.

isoprophlex• 3 years ago

That was a great read.

daytime infomercial of an OS

I'm not sure how you managed to write this post but I'm totally on board with the linguistic energy of it

j452• 3 years ago

Hubris? No such thing at that time. They had to find a way to get things done, which were breaking all the time. Imagine node breaking something every release but a web browser. There was little choice then, compared to too many options today. Firefox was able to be a bit more of a stable presence than the rest in that time.

Devs had to manage every incompatibility between every tag implementation in every browser, especially ways to gracefully downgrade for older and older versions of IE especially in early B2B SaaS. Ironically, these skills have turned out to be incredibly valuable now for other applications for optimizing user experiences even if they're anonymous.

It was that way for a long time that made browser makers learn the hard way why compatibility was a good thing and would not be less competitive.

Looking forward to safari is everything on iOS going away soon.

Thankfully such opinions of the past have to live with the fact that modern javascript apps in many ways, with AJAX calls were invented by Microsoft, no less for the online version of Microsoft Outlook.

stcroixx2• 3 years ago

Here, here.

To top it all off, the next generation of techies think the company that did this is one of the good ones and voluntarily use their software(VSCode?).

cabalamat• 3 years ago

most legacy apps should continue to work

*most*

I recently had an issue with MS deleting IE and a corporate legacy app not working.

rbanffy5• 3 years ago

Compound interest over tech debt can snowball to quite impressive sizes.

Asmod4n2• 3 years ago

75% of PCs I had the pleasure today to „patch“ didn’t have IE Mode at all in edge, but still removed IE. Fun times.

jonathantf22• 3 years ago

IE mode has been around for ages, either push it through MDM or GPO.

jonathantf22• 3 years ago

Edge is shipped with Server 2022, assuming because Windows Admin Centre doesn’t support the only browser that 2019 came with out of the box

rbanffy5• 3 years ago

Which you should

... have done a long time ago.

pwdisswordfishc• 3 years ago

Does this include MSHTML (Trident), or just the iexplore.exe binary?

j452• 3 years ago

For those who experienced IE being forced on computers, simply entertaining the idea of it being forced off computers without choice is not just click-baity but also a special coming full circle moment.

Besides, every step towards an OS being something a user doesn't own or control, either for their own good, or users who can't help themselves, is another step towards lasting demand for usable Linux. '

It's nice that Ubuntu is starting to feel like MacOSX when it started to become usable for the many and not just the few.

bobjordan• 3 years ago

This is a serious problem for us in my business as our business banking software we are forced to use by our bank in mainland China still only works with IE. I spent an hour last night ultimately inputting shady commands into my registry, to try to force IE to open instead of being hijacked by edge. When an entire industry in a country refuses to upgrade what the hell? Of course I’m pissed the bank hadn’t upgraded but it’s infuriating that Microsoft breaks my processes without my permission.

jamal-kumar• 3 years ago

That's really on your bank for insisting on using technology which has been sunset for many many years though.

I would contact them and tell them you're considering switching. If they're anything like the banks in North America they'll be freaking out trying to give you deals to stay. They did this for me when I told them that I would switch over trying to force SMS-based 2fa on me.

I'm really not sure about the economic situation in China right now but since they hiked the interest rates banks have been extremely competitive in terms of signup offers here in the past few months. Might be worth considering!

Gigachad6• 3 years ago

Yeah, MS have a 10 year window to migrate. If you found yourself at the end of 10 years still not migrated, then you’ll only do it when it breaks.

massysett• 3 years ago

I'm at a US government agency and the system that processes our time and attendance still does not work with Chrome or Firefox - I think it's some kind of security certificate issue? So they tell us to use Edge to fill our our time and attendance. I click some link from our internal home page and it loads up the page in "Internet Explorer Mode," complete with the blue "e" in the address bar.

drdaeman• 3 years ago

It's bullshit "security" for banking, it could be that it depends on something that isn't emulated by Edge, like toolbars or some other form of deep browser extensions, not "just" ActiveX.

For all it's worth it could be something as insane as a kernel driver that assumes a certain IE build and hooks into it for "security". Never heard of such things in areas outside of gaming, but won't be remotely surprised. Banking industry is way more backwards than gaming, after all.

plaguepilled2• 3 years ago

I sympathise with your frustration, but the blame is absolutely with your bank. I mean, finances are like THE thing to be security minded about - the fact they're still using IE is just unacceptable from any lens.

robocat2• 3 years ago

Sometimes the blame is regulations: too many hoops for banks to update their software easily and without adding stupid regulatory liabilities. Regulations added to protect the user, but perversely hinder the user.

splitstud• 3 years ago

The warnings started how long ago? The compatability mode is available and works.

amelius• 3 years ago

Block Microsoft, and use a virtual machine that you copy before every session.

rbanffy5• 3 years ago

On VirtualBox it's easy to set the disks as immutable. The machine will come up, write to the disk and, when you reboot, it'll be back into the original state.

More than once I updated the VM only to realize I forgot to make the disk mutable.

yourusername• 3 years ago

This change has been announced long ago. IT should have identified this issue and taken the steps to enable IE mode on Edge for this specific site a year ago.

Gigachad6• 3 years ago

MS announced you shouldn’t be using IE several years ago.

quickthrowman2• 3 years ago

When an entire industry in a country refuses to upgrade what the hell?

Well, I don’t think they can refuse to upgrade any longer if it doesn’t work, right?

quercusa• 3 years ago

We went through this 20 years ago when it was IE6.

bazmattaz• 3 years ago

shudder

Brings me back to the days of having to support IE6 for a client website when everyone has moved on from IE6. That shit was a dog to support

paulmd2• 3 years ago

Korea went deeply down the "custom security" rabbithole too, and many banks there still rely on activeX controls and custom encryption algorithms and other insane bullshit that actively impairs security. It seems to be a regional thing (or at least a developing-country thing).

https://palant.info/2023/01/02/south-koreas-online-security-... HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34231364

https://www.forbes.com/sites/elaineramirez/2016/11/30/south-...

This is not unheard-of in the enterprise world in the US either. To name-and-shame, Allscripts Enterprise EHR system still uses active-x controls and is still actively deployed in hospital systems.

The typical deployment will be a sandboxed VDI installation that isn't allowed to directly talk to anything except its EHR server and has to be connected via citrix or similar. It is still insane, of course, but the medical world is another one that moves slow. Probably some stuff in the financial sector too, they like that shit too.

marktangotango• 3 years ago

I spent two years modernizing one of these IE only apps (moved to chrome/firefox). Sometimes the offending activex control is simply a xml component (literally parsing, xsl, xpath, etc stuff) of a newer version than what was built in at one time. Firefox and Chrome don't handle xml nearly as seamlessly as old IE did. But other times these apps require IE11, but it's actually executing the page in IE6 or 7 compatibility mode. That was the case with mine, Microsoft DHTML Behaviors, the horror, the horror....

oblio3• 3 years ago

South Korea is very much not a developing country and hasn't been one in about 3 decades :-)

ashwagary• 3 years ago

Perhaps a virtual machine running windows with the compatible version of IE just for this purpose would be a good option. Take snapshots after it's setup correctly so any sneaky update shenanigans MS pulls can be reverted.

bunbun69• 3 years ago

Microsoft retains the right to break your process without your permission.

disruptiveink• 3 years ago

And now they'll finally fix it, as they have no other choice. You can thank MS for that.

athorax3• 3 years ago

Take edge with it, please and thank you

skc• 3 years ago

What's wrong with Edge. Been pleasantly surprised by it myself.

athorax3• 3 years ago

Glad it is working out for you! I already have a browser of choice and would prefer my OS not make those decisions for me.

pantulis3• 3 years ago

I think Edge is a better Chrome than Chrome. At least it can show vertical tabs and groups in a way much more easy to understand.

justinclift2• 3 years ago

They keep on trying to force it on people.

The harder they try, the more "NO. FUCK OFF" I get. :/

aprilnya2• 3 years ago

Edge is a great browser, (much better than Chrome), but Microsoft keeps trying to force it onto people, so they start hating it, and rightfully so. If Microsoft wasn’t trying to force it onto people, it would probably be more popular

jeroenhd2• 3 years ago

Edge was absolutely great. I even recommended it at some point.

Then they started packing more features into it than a shareware application in the 2000s. They even went so far as to bundle code that replaces the checkout form in web shops (breaking some of them, of course). Their disgusting methods to force people to use Edge also turned me off. Something good doesn't need its user base to be forced to use it.

It's a real tragedy. Edgium had some great features and Super Duper Secure mode is the obvious next step in defence in depth for browsers. I just can't trust it anymore.

ninkendo• 3 years ago

Have you been able to configure it so it doesn't have an enormous Bing search bar in your new tab page? I know you can change search providers, but the new tab page seems to be hardcoded to Bing with no way to change it.

(No, using a plugin/extension to do this doesn't count, IMO.)

Someone1234• 3 years ago

How will new users install Firefox or Chromeium without any browser at all? Someone going to train them in WinGet?

ElfinTrousers• 3 years ago

I'd actually say, while we're at it, let's throw out Chrome and Firefox too. I'd add Safari to the list but I think that's taken care of itself.

I've been doing Web applications longer than I'd guess your typical HN commenter has been alive. The main conclusion I have come to is that the Web is a great platform for sharing documents, and a lousy platform for applications.

candiddevmike• 3 years ago

Netscape finally wins?

sys32768• 3 years ago

Are they even removing it from Windows 7 and other unsupported operating systems?

teroszsegv• 3 years ago

Nope. In fact I'm still using IE11 on a very old (circa 2003) P4 box with only 2gb ram and win7, mind you I only use it on a very specific websites including HN, pinboard, teddit, invidious, nitter, wikiless and a few others, I've added these filter lists https://filterlists.com/tpl.html plus Spywareblaster.

pantulis3• 3 years ago

Are running on that venerable box for any particular reason?

xbar• 3 years ago

If I could forcibly remove Internet Explorer from Your PC, I would have already done so. You're welcome.

Idiot_in_Vain• 3 years ago

Micro$oft seems to think that my PC is their PC and they can do whatever they like with it, without even asking.

jurimasa• 3 years ago

It is. And they are.

andai• 3 years ago

If you can't open it, you don't own it.

(Optional: "It owns you" ;)

shadowgovt7• 3 years ago

It's complicated.

They'd really prefer not to be in that position, but they learned the (extremely) hard way in the early days of the Internet that when you have the largest OS install-base (And MS still has like 29%), you have some obligation to the global community to police it. Because Lord knows individual users don't pull upgrades in fast enough voluntarily, and an exploit shared by 29% of computers can be easily weaponized online.

The Internet would be much, much worse if not for the steady drumbeat of OS vendors forcing users to patch vulnerabilities via upgrade pursuasion.

(At least until someone finishes development on that vulnerability-free OS. What did they call it? NonexOStant?)

bakugo2• 3 years ago

They'd really prefer not to be in that position

What makes you say this? If I was MS I'd be perfectly happy to effectively own most computers on earth and be able to do anything I want with them.

revskill• 3 years ago

Of course you're the product.

barbariangrunge• 3 years ago

And forcibly adding edge, edge shortcuts, prompts to use edge, and warnings against using Firefox

voytec• 3 years ago

Microsoft has fully moved on to its Edge browser. (While nearly everyone else has moved on to Google Chrome.)

Not a major difference - Edge is based on Chromium.

2OEH8eoCRo02• 3 years ago

You shouldn't be using Internet Explorer at this point but Microsoft shouldn't be breaking your workflow either.

techwiz137• 3 years ago

The problem is, that certain old software like Volvo's VIDA needs IE. And while Edge's IE Tab works it's much much slower in loading.

quickthrowman2• 3 years ago

That sounds like a problem for Geely, not Microsoft.

daviddever23box• 3 years ago

I have zero sympathy for those who, by designing an application solely for use with Internet Explorer, put their heads into the lion's mouth, expecting to get their face licked. (Same applies to Safari.)

mr_toad• 3 years ago

I’ve never seen an app that only works in Safari.

bluelightning2k• 3 years ago

"The only way to destroy this evil is from within" - our operative setting off on this undercover mission 15 years ago

Maursault• 3 years ago

In 1998, Microsoft asserts that their browser was an inherent component of the operating system and could not be extracted. In 2020, Microsoft miraculously defies the impossible! What can't Microsoft do?

tester756• 3 years ago

Well, 22 years of refactor make things possible ;)

justinclift2• 3 years ago

Or they were just lying, which they seem to do a lot of.

jaywalk• 3 years ago

Uhhh, how about the fact that it's taken 20+ years and the development of an entirely new browser to finally begin the extraction of IE from the OS?

watermelon0• 3 years ago

Going forward, Microsoft Edge WebView2 will probably be inherent component of Windows, so they will just replace one browser for another.

For the time being, I assume EdgeHTML is still present, since I assume this is used for the compatibility mode in Edge (and for legacy WebViews).

jeroenhd2• 3 years ago

Windows Explorer was based on IE. It's quite obvious how tight the integration was.

And it was a good idea, to be honest. They've done plenty of anticompetitive shit, but the IE integration into Windows has only ever improved Windows.

awill• 3 years ago

Without reading the article, they're obviously doing this to force Edge on people.

Also, without reading the article, I wish they'd done this years ago. Long before Edge :).

MarkusWandel• 3 years ago

They'd better leave it alone on my obsolete Windows 7 laptop. Until recently, and quite possibly even now, there are cheap band-X IP cameras that can only be configured with an ActiveX plugin.

unxdfa• 3 years ago

Good. I hope that infernal turd is buried. It has been the number one cost centre for our front end stuff for the last decade and a half.

forinti• 3 years ago

Oracle Forms still works in Edge in IE11 compatibility mode. This surprised me, but I can't decide if pleasantly or not.

wkat42422• 3 years ago

Nothing about Oracle is pleasant so for me it would be an easy decision :)

garaetjjte• 3 years ago

Weirdest thing is, they are not "removing" it. It opens normally for a fraction of second and then something closes it and opens Edge instead.

tech234a• 3 years ago

It's a good idea to move away from IE, but it's fairly easy to get around the block. When the Edge prompt comes up, roll over the Edge icon on the taskbar and use the X to close the prompt. Then, click on the IE icon to unminimize the IE window.

Other options include, but are not limited to:

* disabling the IE add-on that triggers the prompt (IEToEdgeBHO): you can disable it via group policy [0] or registry [1] and IE will function as normal, or

* running Internet Explorer without add-ons: iexplore.exe -extoff, or

* opening Internet Options, go to Programs tab, click "Manage add-ons", then clicking "Learn more about toolbars and extensions"

I've also seen other ways of launching IE using VBA or other legacy features. Some of these methods also work on Windows 11.

[0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/internet-explorer/ie11-dep..., CLSID: {1FD49718-1D00-4B19-AF5F-070AF6D5D54C}

[1] https://www.ghacks.net/2020/10/23/internet-explorer-users-wi... (the key type is String)

wkat42422• 3 years ago

20 years too late :')

But the problem is the old webview crap based on IE is still embedded in the system everywhere. Only yesterday I got a popup from something with the "image missing" icon that clearly originates in IE.

tarotuser• 3 years ago

Wired should know better.

Microsoft is not removing IE from 'personal computers'. MD is removing from machines running Windows.

None of my Linux machines are affected, and damn straight are personal machines.

Edit: for those of you who downvoted, I'm tired of having personal computers meaning only MS windows. There's those of us who are Mac users and Linux users both. By making "PC" as windows only is removing the rest of us.

silverwasthere• 3 years ago

Pc means wintel my good dude. Actual personal computers are not seen as "a computer" to lusers. They are workstations. Or devices. But PC (like it was printed on oh so many software boxes) means windows+intel(or unremarkably compatible).

layer8• 3 years ago

The article didn’t say “from all PCs”. They also don’t remove it from Windows 7 PCs that don’t have Edge installed, for example.

h4ch1• 3 years ago

I recently switched to Edge and have been mildly surprised, after turning off all telemetry, having sleeping tabs built-in, which actually work much better than Chrome's and Firefox's (also considering 3rd party extensions), and my browser RAM usage dropping to a "measly" 800MB with 100 tabs open and a non-noticeable delay when I switch to a sleeping tab, seems a much better alternative than using Chrome. Plus sidebar tabs are a huge plus.

skilled• 3 years ago

Wired doing some clickbait meme here, but I heard about the news last week.

My question is, who the hell uses IE still...? And don't give me that one in a million guy stuck with it because he's running Windows 2k Server.

Karawebnetwork• 3 years ago

Working in the B2B world, I can tell you that unfortunately many buyers are still running on archaic systems. Many projects still require support for these old browsers. In the B2C sector, there are so many users that the few who don't upgrade are just a tiny afterthought. In the B2B sector, where a single company not upgrading can mean that more than half of your customers can't use your website, it's a whole other issue.

Yaa101• 3 years ago

A lot of business intranet software still runs on IE, especially in the far east.

taspeotis• 3 years ago

Also discussed on Reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/ShittySysadmin/comments/114s0h0/hel...

collaborative• 3 years ago

Will BrowserComponent in .NET still work? Asking for a friend

keyle• 3 years ago

Now that's the dystopian headline I want a print of on my wall. So Long!

alwaysanon• 3 years ago

This feels like when a mining company has to remediate/recreclamate their mine(s) at the end of their useful life rather than leave them there to cause people problems in the future.

IE11 has long since needed to die and I am glad that MS is doing the right thing for the world and cleaning up the mess on its way out!

gramie• 3 years ago

I was just helping someone who had removed IE from Windows and then couldn't start QuickBooks (from 2016 or so, I think). Not even get to the main page.

My research showed that Intuit had known about this problem for at least 2-3 years, and told people that they would have a fix but never released one, so everyone seemed to end up having to install a new version of QuickBooks, usually with a subscription.

I found a hacky workaround: create a registry key that tells Windows where IE is located (even though it isn't). QuickBooks then starts up just fine, and as long as you don't use the sections that rely on IE (not sure which ones they are, maybe just documentation?), you can use the program just fine.

The people are winding up their business and retiring, so they really didn't want to buy and learn a new version of QB.

Dwedit2• 3 years ago

Already, there is the IE to Edge BHO which forcefully launches a different browser when you attempt to visit a website. You can still turn it off, and proceed to use MSIE.

Microsoft is forcibly removing internet explorer from PCs

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