There is a huge majority of people who do not use Windows’ good old Internet Explorer to browse the internet, thanks to the advent of nifty web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc. which are more efficient, fast, super-easy to use and offer a ton of features that the Internet Explorer lacks in. Many people download another browser and start using it, completely ignoring Internet Explorer. But other users are sometimes not satisfied with this; they want Internet Explorer to be completely gone from their computers.
While completely uninstalling Internet Explorer from your system is not possible, you can certainly disable Internet Explorer in Windows so that you don’t have to deal with it anymore when working on your computer.
Step 1
If you are using Windows 10, type “Control Panel” in the text box of the Start Menu and click on the Control Panel in the search results. If you are using Windows 7, click “Control Panel” in the Start menu.
Step 2
Head to the “Programs” category on the Control Panel home screen. Under that, locate the “Programs and Features” section and click “Turn Windows features on or off”.
Step 3
After you click the link, a dialog box containing a list of different utilities opens. Locate “Internet Explorer 11” and uncheck it. If you are using a different version of Windows (i.e. other than Windows 10), then you may have a different version of Internet Explorer. In other words, it could be Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 9, etc. Irrespective of the version of Internet Explorer, the procedure to disable it remains the same.
A warning dialog box mentioning that turning off/disabling Internet Explorer could affect other programs and utilities. If you want to go ahead with disabling it, click “Yes” and then click “OK” in the Windows Features dialog box.
When you do that, a small dialog box appears while your changes are applied. When it’s complete, a dialog box prompts you to restart the system for the changes to take effect. Restart it then, or do it later manually. Note that it’s necessary to restart the system for the changes to take effect.
Also, note that this process shall remove Internet Explorer from the “Defaults Programs List” and the “Open With” context menu (which appears when you right-click a file)
