system
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Microsoft has you believing that, but at least with Windows 9x and Windows 2000, it’s possible to run Windows without IE, except for the small part, which is for MSHTML, the Microsoft HTML rendering engine.
98 Lite and 2000 Lite by default leave that small part of IE installed.
BTW, Microsoft has gotten criticized before for integrating IE. There may literally be a court order to stop Microsoft from integrating IE with Windows.