Foolestroupe -

IE may have appeared in Windows 2.0 or about then as a separable program, but since Windows 3.11WG at least, IE and Windows Explorer were merged, and the "first version IE" in the original Windows installation could NOT BE REMOVED.

Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) became (sort of) workable with Win 3.11WG, but didn't get really useful until Win95. A problem that came up was that ICS installed on more than one "host" in a Workgroup crashed the entire workgroup.

Turning on ICS made changes to IE and Windows Explorer that could not be reset by "turning off ICS," in both Win 3.11WG and Win95, so it was necessary to manually delete a rather large group of files modified by ICS, then do a "repair reinstall" of Windows to restore IE so that Win Explorer would work without totalling the OS.

I had a Workgroup setup under Win 3.11, and since the "problem" was unknown when I got a Win95 machine and tried to make Win95 the "host" machine, I found it quite early. It was about a year before the "fix" procedure was published, and I had to run it on Win 3.11WG because IE could not be removed (or repaired) by any other method.

Later patches let Win98 or Win98SE turn ICS on/off without manually patching IE/Explorer, but I don't know when they appeared. It was some time after the first Win98 releases.

IE and (Windows) Explorer were/are the same program, and NOT UNINSTALLABLE past the original version that came with your OS, at least since "Workgroups" first appeared.

You can, and always could, add another browser, but the one that was part of the original OS had to remain in place. Since IE is "mozilla based" it might have been released as a standalone for other operating systems. It's not the addition of "another browser" that's the problem. It's that the IE that's "locked into" the Windows OS can't be removed.

John