Microsoft Will Forcibly Remove Internet Explorer from Most Windows 10 PCs Today (arstechnica.com) 113
An anonymous reader shares a report: Internet Explorer 11 was never Windows 10's primary browser -- that would be the old, pre-Chromium version of Microsoft Edge. But IE did continue to ship with Windows 10 for compatibility reasons, and IE11 remained installed and accessible in most versions of Windows 10 even after security updates for the browser ended in June of 2022. That ends today, as Microsoft's support documentation says that a Microsoft Edge browser update will fully disable Internet Explorer in most versions of Windows 10, redirecting users to Edge.
Good ridance (Score:3)
The only thing I need IE11 for in the year of our lord 2023 is to configure some devices that, for some reson, do not work well with FF or Chrome. The sacrifice to Junk said devices (or set up a Win7 VM just to configure them) is a small sacrifice to make for the further demise of IE.
Having said that, some people may have more/different needs, good luck to them, hope Edgium's "IE mode" helps them.
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And as I understand it, IE Compatibility Mode is basically a sandboxed version of IE running in Chromium Edge. So I'm guessing while IE will remain as DLLs and registry entries, an actual executable will disappear. The fact is that Microsoft is still stuck with IE for the foreseeable future, even if they reduce its visibility. There's still one application at my office that still requires it, because it's necessary for signature pads. Why the application developer just doesn't move to electronic signatures
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Inexpensive security cameras still being sold all over Amazon today need the ActiveX or whatever functionality in IE to work properly. The live video feed freezes after a few seconds in every other browser and Edge is the worst.
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This is a major issue for anyone with older security appliances.
Many used Silverlight and these cameras are still in operation today, many of them still being sold.
Microsoft would be better just leaving it alone and dropping it. actively destroying people's ability to use their computers is unfortunate and somewhat despicable.
It takes more effort to destroy it than it does to just let it go. There is clearly a commercial benefit to harming their consumer or they wouldn't be doing it.
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My work uses those cameras for customer support. Microsoft just destroyed my ability to support our customers, by removing software from my computer without my consent. I can agree with you about all of Microsoft's shortcomings, but that still doesn't give them the right to remove software from my computer without my consent.
People wonder why professionals use Linux. This is why.
Microsoft does not, and has never, understood what it means to be a professional software developer. It's not merely that
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No, actually I didn't consent. I didn't install Windows, and I did not consent to the removal of software from my system. It is one thing to apply patches to an existing software product, but quite another to remove it completely.
And here's the thing: I shouldn't have to look for a solution at all. I don't use IE for anything except customer support, and only because the camera maker supports IE only. I'm not going to use either IE or Edge for anything else internet related, because I know the qualit
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...and why did you (or whoever it was, if it wasn't you) buy a bunch of cameras that were only supported by one particular browser? Surely there were better choices available at the time.
I have some old IP cams (GeoVision GV-BX110s, if it matters) sitting in my desk that were primarily supported by some wonky browser interface, but a
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I could wax poetic on how corporate buying works... but suffice to say, I didn't buy the cameras, I just had to work with them. At the time the decision was made, it was a reasonable assumption that Microsoft would continue to support a browser it had support for at least a decade at that point. It was also interesting to know that we didn't discover the browser issue until long after the cameras had been bought and installed...
But really, the issue is that after a certain amount of experience with Lin
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without my consent.
Unfortunately, you gave them consent when you installed Windows 10 and clicked "Next" on the EULA / TOS page.
Not saying that I approve of such BS. (See my sig.) But, that is the law as it is currently enforced in the US. Only way you might get out of it is living in / moving to the EU, but even then I'm not sure Microsoft would be penalized for any violations.
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Re:Good ridance (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a pretty good example in a nutshell as to why having any product that ends up being sole sourced. MS dominated, at first through anti-competitive measures, and later simply through momentum, a near absolute control of the browser market, for over a decade, and as no regulatory bodies seemed all that keen to curb that dominance, or to see what might happen, here we are, with a whole host of applications that are either abandonware or so complex to move over to HTML 5 that some developers STILL keep pushing products that require IE. And while MS can make grand pronouncements about killing IE, the fact that they have to keep a sandboxed version present in Edge tells you not even they dare actually just kill it.
apple forced webkit on ios & then removed wind (Score:2)
apple forced webkit on ios & then removed the windows version of safari
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only buy hardware that supports open standards.
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I have some security cameras I bought in the last decade that, believe it or not, are IE only.
Unless it runs on a specific IE only plugin they'll run fine under Edge running in IE compatibility mode. That will continue to exist.
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I have an XP VM I fire up for stupid shit like that
Re: Good ridance (Score:2)
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The only thing I need IE11 for in the year of our lord 2023 is to configure some devices that, for some reson, do not work well with FF or Chrome.
Like, they were made more than a few years ago, when modern web standards didn't yet work reliably and UIs were built with one plugin or another, but because the hardware wasn't total junk with built-in obsolescence it still works just fine today?
The sacrifice to Junk said devices (or set up a Win7 VM just to configure them) is a small sacrifice to make for the further demise of IE.
Be careful what you casually consign to the junk pile. It might just be a vital piece of medical equipment at your local hospital that would have saved your life but now can't because if the anything-older-than-two-years-is-obsolete web developer crowd get their wa
Whose PC is it, anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Whose PC is it, anyway? (Score:5, Funny)
The EULA a windows-user must agree to makes their PC into Microsoft's playground.
Linux distros don't do this.
Man the sense of deja vu is strong right now..... has a conversation like this happened on Slashdot before?
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> Linux distros don't do this.
Unless you happen to like the way your init scripts work.
https://www.pcworld.com/articl... [pcworld.com]
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Nobody stops you from rolling your own with init.
And a distribution choosing different software eight years ago isn't the same as a private company intruding on your personal computer to change software without consent. And no, EULAs are not consent.
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Could you elaborate on your statement that "no, EULAs are not consent?"
Because as I understand, legally, they are. They are binding until a court of law finds any piece of them to be illegal. Then only that piece is rejected.
Was your statement a statement of your opinion that EULAs should not be binding? Maybe stated as a moral absolute? Or are you aware of a legal precedent here that I am not?
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False equivalence. (Score:2)
Canonical (maker of Ubuntu) did not reach into everyone's hard drive and remove their init scripts. It changed the setup for its new offerings (15 and onward), but didn't do anything to prior offerings. So that is not at all similar to Microsoft forcibly deleting files off of your hard drive.
And anyway, if you really don't like systemd, there are other distros of Linux you can use. Windows does not have similar diversity.
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If Windows-users have to agree to a license in order to use their computer, then every shop selling Windows PCs or laptops without agreeing to that license being openly part of the purchase process is deliberately selling a product which does not work.
What they're doing is illegal in many countries, by the letter and the spirit of the law. But the law never gets enforced when all the big players are doing similar things.
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If it really is illegal, then the correct thing to do is file a complaint, and push the issue in court. If nobody does that, then they may as well be legal because they are getting away with it.
I agree that the law doesn't get evenly enforced. It's a human-enforced system so it is rife with every kind of human imperfection. In particular, the rich-and-powerful have superior influence in the creation of laws, in their interpretation, and in their enforcement. So, that is the reality to which we must adap
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Nice of the company to decide for you what software you can have.
In this case it's something we've been asking them to delete for decades so I don't think there'll be many complaints.
This is how Apple and Google do shit. Guess who's (Score:2)
late to the you-don't-own-shit party? Buy, Mickeysoft is all about rent seeking, this is part of the pay-a-monthly-sub-for-"your"-"PC"-come-phone. Windows S for all.
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It's because Internet Explorer is part of Windows, so as long as you are on a current version of Windows and expecting it to get security updates, Microsoft has to support it.
You are free to use older versions of Windows, or block the specific update that removes it, but of course you will then not be supported by Microsoft.
Good Riddance (Score:3)
This site has been covering IE since the Netscape Wars and the DoJ Antitrust action and it's never been good news.
I'm happy to say that I never once found a need to guide a client into ActiveX controls, IE6 quirks, (or even Flash for that matter).
There were always other options and the standards track was always a better investment.
Full credit to the team for pioneering XMLHttpRequest, though.
Re:Good Riddance (Score:4, Interesting)
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One has to wonder how many billions/trillions of dollars of wasted developer productivity was wasted on IE.
It gave developers jobs. Why are you anti-job when a corporation is willing to spend their money for supporting people working? Not our problem MS has all the long term vision of a gadfly.
Re: Good Riddance (Score:2)
Re: Good Riddance (Score:2)
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Not clear if you're just being sarcastic, but even if IE spontaneously disappeared in the mid 2000s it wouldn't have cost any developers their jobs. (Unless you were so narrowly focused on an IE specialty that you couldn't broaden your skills to W3C standards, in which case you shot your own self in the foot.) Most web designers I worked with during that era loathed IE with a passion and even if it did create marginally more work for them, they had other projects they would have rather been working on.
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The place I was working some time around 2015 had all of their administration procedures in their internal network set up so they only worked with IE. I could use whatever browser I wanted but not for the internal stuff.
At some point Microsoft and practically everyone else suddenly pointed out that there were some very serious vulnerabilities in IE that Microsoft could not fix, and that Firefox was the way to go. It took a while to convert their internal procedures but by the time I left IE was no longer
Re: Good Riddance (Score:2)
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There were other options, but the relationship that MS fostered with web developers guaranteed an incredible depth of penetration. Some applications just simply required the ActiveX components, and even when suitable replacements came along, lazy developers just kept churning out IE-dependent apps. Now even MS wishes it would die, but just can't kill it.
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Ever since the days of IE4, when it was just barely possible, I encouraged clients to code to W3 standards and avoid locking themselves into any single browser, much less any single version of any single browser, which a number of proprietary and bespoke apps actually did.
Almost no one listened. Microsoft (whom I then referred to as Mafia$oft) had the ear of IT management, and "Developers, Developers, Developers!" did not.
Nowadays it's no longer ActiveX crapware, but proprietary SaaS that promises the worl
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There were always other options and the standards track was always a better investment.
No, there weren't. That's kind of the point. For quite a few years, in the early days of what we might now call "web apps" and of embedded GUIs on networked equipment using browsers, if you wanted significant graphics in your graphical user interface then you needed a plugin. There was no HTML5 canvas or SVG or WebGL. There were ActiveX and Flash and Java applets.
Next up (Score:5, Funny)
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Replacing with it Personal OneDrive, for a new generation of lockin?
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Everyone including Microsoft is working toward a world in which the OS is largely irrelevant. We're a good bit of the way there already, and that is a good thing.
What I don't understand is how Microsoft plans to make money without bundling, tying, lying about APIs, and so forth. They are a competent cloud provider but not nearly competitive with AWS. They make great dev tools but the need for anything more than VS Code is shrinking rapidly. They likewise make a great office product that a lot of people
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I feel like you are seeking some kind of recursive Funny moderation. I think your third paragraph clashes with your second.
You already know Microsoft is lying about the APIs, and yet you think your code can walk away?
games are still very windows & linux ones wrap (Score:2)
games are still very windows & lots of Linux ones are just wrappers
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Everyone including Microsoft is working toward a world in which the OS is largely irrelevant. We're a good bit of the way there already, and that is a good thing.
Why is that a good thing?
I understand why many like hosting their data "in the cloud", and being able to "run apps" on a variety of devices and have everything "just work" with access to "your" data from anywhere in the world. There are legitimate use cases for that.
But there are also legitimate use cases for air gapped, locally controlled hardware, software and data.
I don't travel much, and when I do I prefer to leave the tech at home. For the most part, I don't want to host my personal data and informatio
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Apple's Pro Tools
Replying to self. Meant Avid, not Apple.
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Cross-platform software is a good thing in general, because it reduces development and maintenance costs, and makes software available to more platforms and hence more people.
There are obvious exceptions as you've pointed out.
It's nice to have multiple options.
All we need (Score:3)
Next all we need is for it to remove all of Windows :)
Someone here would say it, so I might as well be the first.
Up yours, Microsoft (Score:1)
The only program I have to use so my practice can interact with my government is IE only and the developer won't switch to something other than ActiveX.
Oh well, time to spin a Win7 VM.
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I'm in the same boat. The developer of the application needs the ActiveX controls to manage signature pads and PDF form functionality (in particular automatic uploads of edited PDF forms), and while I'm sure there are perfectly reasonable ways to use HTML 5 to do it, there either isn't the expertise or the money. I warned them thirteen years ago at a meeting that they needed to sort the issue out, that MS was going to kill IE at some point. But then Edge's IE 11 mode came along, and it sent the message "Hey
So are they force-installing Edge too? (Score:3)
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I think I am going to need to use then an LTSC version to request certificates from MS certificate web services (internal PKI).
Internal PKI and WSUS really, really need a bit of TLC from MS. Not putting whitespace around every screen a dialog. Or moving notepad to a store app.
Re:So are they force-installing Edge too? (Score:5, Informative)
I got a Windows 10 box to do (ONLY!) some Arduino and related development, where it's just easier to "go with the flow" on the best-supported box. (That being said, there's no "print" capability in the WIndows 10 Arduino IDE, but the same version has this on the Mac. WTF??! Cut-and-paste code into Notepad seems to be the minimally best way to print code from Arduino IDE.)
I've tried to lock down the WIndows box. It seems there's NO WAY to live without Edge. Anything I do in the search box on the task bar (such as "set default printer") goes to Edge, despite the browser preference being set to Firefox. And of course Microsoft decided I needed to download Spotify, which sent me into Preferences/Settings Hell to figure out how to disable the Microsoft Store's downloading of stuff it decided I needed.
I expected to find the Windows 10 user interface to be annoying. What I didn't expect was how Microsoft pushes shit onto the machine, even when the IT guy tried to lock it down to the minimal configuration I needed. (Firefox, Arduino IDE, VNC Viewer to get back to my Mac, a Java 11 non-Oracle runtime to run JMRI - Java Model Railroad Interface, a non-Adobe PDF viewer -and NOTHING ELSE-)
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I don't know why you think you need to use Windows for a low-friction Arduino development environment. I've been using Linux to dev on Arduino for years and it "just works".
The spirit of Arduino is low-cost hacking... which aligns perfectly with Linux and would explain why there's plenty of effort made to ensure the experience is smooth.
And you'd avoid all those issues with Windows you're complaining about.
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Windows Server 2019 (and maybe beyond) is the same way.
Good Start (Score:5, Insightful)
Excellent first move. Now if they'd just remove Telemetry, Cortana, Edge, Ads in the Start Menu, One Drive integration + annoyers and other bloatware that comes baked in to Windows and that can't be uninstalled then I might be tempted to use Windows again some day.
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"Forcibly remove" eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
As in, Microsoft extends their grubby monopolistic paws, reaches into my computer through the intarwebs and disables something they don't like on my system?
Besides the fact that they don't know that I might be needing Explorer because, say, I'm a blind user and my screen reader has hooks into Explorer to read me web content - i.e. Microsoft would render my computer unusable for me, a disabled user - I'm also 100% certain it's just as legal as Russian hackers planting running cryptomining bots on my computer without my consent.
I'd say I can't wait to grab the popcorn and watch the class action lawsuit Microsoft rightfully deserves unfold, but I'm almost certain nobody will sue them. Because nobody challenges gigantic abusive big tech companies anymore, sadly...
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Of fuck off already. It was an example. Whether it was a good example is irrelevant. The point was that Microsoft doesn't know if and for what purpose I might want to keep Explorer around, they have no way to know, and they have no right to interfere with my system without my permission.
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You must be new to Windows
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Well yes and no: I haven't use it (seriously anyway) since 95.
And incidentally back then, screen readers for the blind did hook into application libraries, ran as TSRs and wedged themselves between system calls any dirty way they had to to perform their TTS duties. If you installed something that replaced certain DLLs for instance, they'd stop working.
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Of fuck off already. It was an example. Whether it was a good example is irrelevant.
I dunno man, in the future, maybe you should consider using good examples instead of one's that don't make any fucking sense. People respond more positively to stuff that makes fucking sense, for some reason.
IF they wanted to make PCs more secure (Score:5, Informative)
They would forcibly remove Windows and install Linux.
Should have been retired back in 2007 (Score:2)
Wait, what? (Score:2)
Didn't Microsoft tell the court that it was impossible to remove IE from Windows (emphasis mine).
Please don't tell me that MS LIED to the court!
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yea in windows 98
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Yeah, what they probably meant was that a bunch of the underlying APIs for accessing networks utilized IE. So, without IE, those apps stop working.
For example, the IE Group Policies are still needed when opening Office documents from a LAN since the policies allow the administrator to set trusted network zones which are then used by Office to determine how much security to apply.
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Didn't Microsoft tell the court that it was impossible to remove IE from Windows (emphasis mine).
Please don't tell me that MS LIED to the court!
I appreciate that you're too fucking dumb to understand that Windows 10 isn't the same OS as Windows 98.
IE11 still used by latest Microsoft 365 (Score:2)
Outlook v2301 pointing to what's mybrowser.org says IE11
agent string: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; Trident/7.0; Microsoft Outlook 16.0.16026)
Temporary workarounds (Score:2)
yeah, no thanks. (Score:2)
huh, so apparently previously *you* couldn't remove IE (because reasons) .. removing it -- because this time they made a good browser, honest.
but MS has flipped a switch and is now
But wait, *you* cannot remove edge... because reasons.
Oddly enough despite having automatic updates disabled (which is way, WAY more of a hassle than it needs to be.. MS is shit, a horrible, vile company -- and that will likely never change) firing up IE still works, but attempting to visit any site will open up Edge, along with a
What about Edge? (Score:2)
If they could forcibly remove both IE and Edge in Windows 11, that'd be great, thanks.
Any way to run ol ActiveX things? (Score:2)
Does anyone know if there's a standalone app to be able to run these after IE is finally dead?
Re: Any way to run ol ActiveX things? (Score:2)
"Many old, cheap and shitty CCTV"
The black blob stole the grey square from your home.
Yeah, some analog and digital security cameras were really that bad back in the day. Bonus if the VCR was recording the B&W cameras on a quad split screen and the VHS tape was all jumpy and filled with noise bars (seen plenty of that back then).
But anyway, if you think a security camera is "shitty", that's a good sign that it's time to replace them as their usefulness in helping to solve a crime is quest
What about IE Tab? (Score:2)
Lawsuits commence in 3..2..1.. (Score:2)
I've got a PLC (programmable logic controller) whose programming/interface software will refuse to run unless it finds IE. No fair trying to run it on a Windows emulator (Wine for example). If IE isn't there, it quits. It doesn't actually _use_ IE. It just checks for it to ensure that you aren't doing something Evil like running on another OS.
There might be hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of these cheap PLCs running process controls, building systems, etc. I hope Microsoft has deep pockets.
I still use IE11 on one machine (Score:2)
While I normally use FF for browsing I still use IE11 for a few limited things. The entire reason for doing this is font rendering. I refuse to enable blurry type and without it switched on font rendering in all other browsers is absolutely atrocious.
To date the best half solution I've been able to find is enabling blurry type and use raster fonts as much as possible. I normally can't stand aliasing but on the web everything is shit without it.
We told you so (Score:2)
You know... I have absolutely zero sympathy for all those people (including the disturbingly large number posting in these comments) whining about their expensive devices, or their embedded systems, and so on. No matter what year these were purchased, there were no shortage of smart IT professionals at the time warning about the dangers of opting for equipment/systems that were locked-into this proprietary commodity browser from a single company. This means each company that bought this shit either:
A) Didn'
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"Windows 10" was specified at least 4 times in the article. I don't know how they would craft it any more specifically in an attempt to help you out.
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Wow... that's a ways back. Although I was there and I remember it. :) If I missed that implication I do apologize.
Re:The OTHER hanger-on. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: The OTHER hanger-on. (Score:2)
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I had a similar issue running my CNC, except mine runs on a raspberrypi and I was just using a Chromebook to VNC into it for a display.
Mid operation Chrome decided to update and decided that the extension providing the VNC client was no longer supported so deleted it.
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A client of mine has an older $100k CNC machine
And what's it doing running Windows 10 Home edition instead of one of the many editions more suited for the job and completely unaffected by this announcement today?
Re: The OTHER hanger-on. (Score:2)
I hear stories like this all the time involving CNC machines and other heavy industrial equipment costing hundereds of thousands of dollars.
I can understand this being pulled with cheap Internet of Shit devices, but it's absolutely criminal to lock a piece of equipment that costs more than your house to shit software written for Windows of all things.
Corporate customers need to start monstering industrial equipment manufactuers with a reverse license agreement that forces them to release every technical det
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Pretty much this, but more than just "remove ability to access internet" as much as "remove ability to access anything. Dedicated vlan for his CNC tool and its programmer, no routing, and go on with life.
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Because shdocvw/ieframe was at the very core of Windows Explorer among many other shell utilities. Edge has compatibly (mostly) supplanted it
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I thought Edge had a "compatibility mode". Microsoft detailed a way of completely killing IE some time ago and I made use of it (not that I use Edge either) so my interest in Edge's ability to spoof IE is marginal at best.
Is the vampire really dead? Does this constitute a "stake through the heart"?
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It does. I maintain some computers in a department at work where that feature is enabled for a state-government website our people need to access that still needs IE and Silverlight (!) to run. We keep a copy of the Silverlight installer on hand because you can't download it from Microsoft anymore, and there are some registry hacks involved in keeping this site running in "IE mode" (otherwise, the override to do so expires every 30 days). It's a royal pain in th