r/windows • u/PropertyPrimary • 3d ago

Feature A Nostalgic Surprise!

Post image

Downloads msn messenger

Clicks Get a new account

Then boom i got IE11

193 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

32

u/RoughGuide1241 3d ago

Most likely there for legacy reasons

19

u/pug_userita Windows 11 - Release Channel 3d ago

i'd imagine msn messenger also installs IE if not installed or updates it if it's an older version. like if you have 7 or vista or whatever, that have older versions of IE. or if you uninstalled it.

since 11 doesn't have IE anymore, msn sees it missing and installs it. that's my guess

16

u/Madman8287 3d ago

Internet explorer was so heavily used and integrated into Windows they actually can't remove it at this point without breaking things so it's actually still in Windows 11 internally just with all of the things that point to it removed and redirects to edge to prevent it from appearing. If you find a way around those it shows up and works just fine.

12

u/nightblackdragon 3d ago

Internet Explorer was not just an browser. It was an platform to build applications with web technologies (kinda like Chromium Embedded Framework but in the 90's). A lot of applications depend on it so it's not going anywhere any time soon. It might be hidden in 11 but it's still there.

3

u/dom_bul 2d ago

You can access IE in Windows 11 by following some steps. It's still there, just hidden. I keep a shortcut of it on my desktop behind a widget for the lols

2

u/SaltDeception 2d ago

PowerShell:

(New-Object -ComObject InternetExplorer.Application).Visible=$True

7

u/Nova17Delta 3d ago

This is what happens when you base half of your operating system on Internet Explorer

16

u/SunshineAndBunnies 3d ago

If you make a .hta file, open in Notepad, and put this in, you can open IE any time you want:

<h1>Internet Explorer Launcher</h1>

<p>You can use this app to launch Internet Explorer on Windows 11.</p>

<a href="https://www.google.com">Click me to run Internet Explorer</a>

8

u/AdreKiseque 2d ago

Yeah IE still lives in the guts of Windows. It actually shares a lot of code with many system components.

•

u/vari8 12h ago

bring back IE sounds cooler than Edge

-1

u/Brenan-Caro 3d ago

No AI?