How to Remove Internet Explorer from Windows Computers and Servers

Support for Internet Explorer 11 ended on June 15, 2022 and IE 11 will no longer be accessible after February 14, 2023.

Even so, Internet Explorer 11 is still installed as the default web browser with every version of Windows and Windows Server. To make matters worse, Windows 10 also shipped with non-Chromium Edge (now called Legacy Edge). You'll need to download and install a "modern" web browser, such as Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, FireFox, etc. Keep in mind that you can reload Internet Explorer sites with IE mode in Microsoft Edge.

Even with ChrEdge (my name for Chromium Edge) installed as the default web browser, I've heard from a few customers that IE is still being used for some web work flows. For example, a customer recently showed me this MFA security confirmation prompt that is opening in IE for some reason.

All this leads me to the task at hand. How do you uninstall Internet Explorer 11 from Windows?

This is not straight forward since IE 11 is part of the Windows installation. It cannot be removed as a Windows application or feature. The answer is to use DISM (Deployment Imaging Servicing Management) installed with all versions of Windows and Windows Server.

Run the following command from an elevated CMD or PowerShell prompt:

C:\Windows\System32\dism.exe /online /Disable-Feature /FeatureName:Internet-Explorer-Optional-amd64

Removal only takes a few seconds and the output looks like this:

DISM will prompt you to restart the computer to complete the operation. Until you do, Internet Explorer will still show as an available web browser. Optionally, you can add the /Quiet switch which will not show DISM uninstall progress and will automatically restart the computer when it's done.

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ProTip: Scheduled Task to Start Stopped Services in Exchange Server

As a best practice, I've always created a scheduled task on my Exchange Servers that starts all stopped services 1 minute after server startup. This is useful for virtualized environments where servers restart much faster than physical environments. Often the VM comes back up before the network has fully initialized. When this happens, some of the Exchange services do not start properly.

This scheduled task is becoming important with the release of the January 2023 Exchange Server Security Updates. There is a known issue that Microsoft Exchange AD Topology service may not start properly on Exchange 2016 servers running on Windows Server 2012 R2. Microsoft is investigating.

I've seen this happen on several of my customers' environments. Since almost all Exchange services rely on the AD Topology service, none of the Exchange services will start. You are required to start all the services manually after every reboot. Instead, you can install the scheduled task that does this for you.

Run the following from an elevated PowerShell or EMS prompt:

$TaskProgram =  "$env:SystemRoot\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe"

$TaskArguments = '-NoProfile -command "gwmi win32_service | where {$_.StartMode -eq ''Auto'' -and $_.State -eq ''Stopped''} | Start-Service"'

$TaskAction = New-ScheduledTaskAction -Execute $TaskProgram -Argument $TaskArguments

$TaskTrigger = New-ScheduledTaskTrigger -AtStartup -RandomDelay 00:01:00

Register-ScheduledTask -TaskName "Start Stopped Services" -Action $TaskAction -Trigger $TaskTrigger -RunLevel Highest -User "system" -Description "Starts all stopped services 1 minute after startup due to slow network initialization."

It's safe to install this on any Exchange server.

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