Second essay: It's a long long way to get rid of M$IE
A small
contribution in order to damage Micro$oft
by Fravia+, 17 June 1998
Dear readers, most sentient beings hate Micro$oft in such a passionate way, that at time it
seems legitime to ask 'Why?'. Indeed some may wonder why is such a hate so deep rooted, so
absolute, so fierce.
Well, a possibile answer is given in this small essay:
Micro$oft
'plants' its software so DEEP in your computer, that you de facto
cannot get rid of it, like it or not. Not surprisingly one of the most 'evil rooted' pieces
of software is M$'s Internet Explorer. Billgato and his minions wanted to make sure that any
user, once hoocked into using the M$-browser, would never have had the ability
to easily change to a 'real' browser... well-knowing that nobody in his right mind would have
returned to their pukesoftware.
As we have already seen in another essay What's behind the mm256.dat and mm2048.dat files?, already in Windows 95 (and NT) the interaction between Micro$oft's browser and Micro$oft's operating system has reached such a level that you can only tremble thinking what for monstruosities will conceal (yeah, it's the right word: conceal) windows'98.
I publish this now in the hope to damage a little more Micro$oft's current 'delicate' legal situation. Judge by yourself if this (the only way I know of to get really rid of Micro$oft's Interenet explorer once it has been installed) is the way an 'user friendly' operating system (whatever this is supposed to mean... IMO Unix is far more user friendly than windows :-) should handle its customers...
Well... you may start like all the nice brave users do: using the shoddy ADD/REMOVE function. Please do, go ahead, once you have finished you'll notice that there are still many files as well as Registry information and garbage pertaining to Micro$oft's Internet explorer.
How to purge completely your system of M$IE then?
Well, it's definitely NOT easy... one could think that Micro$oft actually DOES NOT WANT you to get rid of M$IE... well, here are the necessary steps (taken from Steven Patterson's list):
Best to print these instructions and follow directions while removing. When you are done, Every existance of IE will be gone, even the IE icon in the control panel.
Deleting IE - totally - step by step - don't hold your breath It's quite a chore. These instructions originate from Microsoft:
Uninstall each of the following items in this order:
a.) ActiveMovie
b.) NetMeeting
c.) Internet Mail & News 1.0
d.) Internet Explorer 3.0
Since you've got your registry saved (copied) to your Safety folder then
we can get back to the way things were before you started editing the
Registry.
EDITING THE REGISTRY IS AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS THING TO DO AND AS A
STANDARD WARNING WE STATE THAT IF SOMETHING IS DONE INCORRECTLY IN
HERE IT COULD CAUSE THE NEED FOR A COMPLETE DELETION OF WINDOWS95 FROM
THE COMPUTER AND NEED TO BE RE-INSTALLED.
When you (or they :-) have installed Internet Explorer, some Windows
95 system files have been replaced. If you find that the newer versions of these files
cause problems with some other applications, you can restore the
original versions. The files, and their original versions, are:
ADVAPI32.DLL in the Wind95_11.cab file on the OS_CD-ROM (or floppy).
COMCT132.DLL in the Win95_10.cab file on the OS_CD-ROM (or floppy).
OLEAUT32.DLL in the Win95_09.cab file on the OS_CD-ROM (or floppy).
If you need to restore these files, just place them directly inside the WINDOWS\SYSTEM
folder.
One problem is NOT solved yet: you still have the 'self regenerating' mm256.dat and mm2048.dat files inside your 'puter! Have a look :-(