Many Internet Explorer users have upgraded to IE8, only to find that it just isn’t working for whatever reason

Uninstalling it can pose a few problems: -

Microsoft have written a knowledgebase article: How do I Uninstall or Remove Internet Explorer 8? The article speaks of a  utility that allegedly does the business. I suggest that you go there and give it a try first

If you don’t have any joy with that, then  look for Internet Explorer 8 in the Add/Remove programs section (or the Programs and Features section) of Control Panel. I’m assuming here that you installed XP Service Pack 3 before you installed IE8.  If you didn’t then we have another, larger problem: You can’t uninstall Internet Explorer 8 if it is set as not removable. This occurs if you install Internet Explorer 8 before you install Service Pack 3 (SP3) for Windows XP. If you did indeed do this then you won’t find an uninstall link in Control Panel; and… Are you ready for a lot of tedious work?.. You’ll have to uninstall SP3, uninstall IE8, reinstall SP3, then if you want to give it another try, re-install IE8 and/or install FireFox. – I did say it would be tedious, and indeed you have several hours’ work there; as well as a possibility of other things going tits-up too.

(In the Microsoft KB article How do I uninstall or remove Internet Explorer 8? There are methods outlined with which you can manually get to and run the uninstaller from a Command Prompt, should you need to do so.)

OK. – Assuming that you can indeed find an entry for IE8 in Control Panel: -

When you click Remove it should start the "Windows Internet Explorer 8 Removal Wizard":

- Which is where things start to go pear-shaped: -

You’ll most likely be warned that any number of pieces of software were installed since the upgrade to IE8. It’s possible that removing IE8 will break one or more of them. Marvellous!

If you’ve only recently upgraded then this list should be fairly short; however it does tend to potentially get long after only a short period of time. – Nevertheless, if you’re getting grief from IE8, then you have only two options; those being to take the risk and uninstall IE8, hoping that you won’t have to reinstall too many broken applications afterwards, or, and this is the option that I recommend, ignore IE8 (If you can.) and install a much better browser like FireFox and use that instead.

If you’re uninstalling IE8 your computer will ask you to reboot it afterwards. After rebooting you just start Internet Explorer and it should have reverted to IE7.

It’s all great fun isn’t it? – Never mind: Windows 7 will RTM soon, on 22nd October 2009, and it promises to be a lot more user-friendly than XP. – Hopefully. On that note I’ll just say 1 more thing before I end off: Please; for the sake of advancement, when you get your copy of Windows 7, install and run the 64-bit version if at all possible. – Let’s end 32-bit computing with all its limitations once and for all.