Removing IE 11 to IE 10 on Win 7 PC

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I made a dumb mistake by allowing “tag-alongs” to be installed with a new update of a popular and useful utility (which I’ll leave un-named). Thinking I had successfully (WRONG) deselected 4 IE add-ons – part of an AVG package – wound up as an unacceptable situation. I immediately uninstalled two add-ons one of which was AVG toolbar and another AVG add-on *forgot that name”. What I then discovered is that I wound up with a foreign looking IE 11 reminiscent of the way it shows up in metro Win 8.1 – full screen allowing one auto-hiding bar. I could not get it to show my RoboForm bar even when it was the only one selected!! No new add-ons appear indicating what I might deactivate. I use RoboForm paired with a favorites bar which has mostly sites needing passwords. This is untenable for me.

Having heard of a neat solution for other problems requiring removal of IE (dropping to previous versions, IE 10 for me) and allowing a “refreshed” IE 11 version to re-occur in the natural updates cycle. I checked Windows Installed Updates, but, alas, I’ve no clue on which update installed IE 11 in the first place. Do I have to search the entire Knowledge Base KBs? There must be a way as this technique seems to have been used readily by others.

I’m not quite hung out to dry, but I’d sure like some help on this!!!

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There are three places you need to check, to make sure that IE 11 is uninstalled, and all of them are found in Control Panel / Programs and Features:
1. In the main list, “Uninstall or change a program”. If you see IE 11 there, uninstall it.
2. In the upper left of the window, click on “View installed updates”. If you see an IE 11 update, uninstall it.
3. In the upper left of the window, click on “Turn Windows features on or off”. In the box which appears, uncheck IE 11 (if it is checked), then click OK.

Now exit Control Panel and reboot the computer. You will find that IE 11 is gone, and you will be back to whatever you had before IE 11 was installed. If by chance you don’t have a new enough version of IE installed, you can download the desired version from Microsoft.com and install it.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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There are three places you need to check, to make sure that IE 11 is uninstalled, and all of them are found in Control Panel / Programs and Features:
1. In the main list, “Uninstall or change a program”. If you see IE 11 there, uninstall it.
2. In the upper left of the window, click on “View installed updates”. If you see an IE 11 update, uninstall it.
3. In the upper left of the window, click on “Turn Windows features on or off”. In the box which appears, uncheck IE 11 (if it is checked), then click OK.

Now exit Control Panel and reboot the computer. You will find that IE 11 is gone, and you will be back to whatever you had before IE 11 was installed. If by chance you don’t have a new enough version of IE installed, you can download the desired version from Microsoft.com and install it.

I’d just like to correct this.

IE is part of Windows and will not appear in Programs and Features.

Unchecking IE 11 in Turn Windows features on or off should not be done unless you have another browser installed as you will lose IE and all access to the Internet and it will not revert you to the version you upgraded from.

Only uninstalling IE 11 from Installed Updates will revert you to the version you upgraded from.

While re-checking IE 11 in Turn Windows features on or off will normally reinstate IE 11, there’s no guarantee of that and is why is you must have another browser installed first.

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Wow, something worked!! I don’t have the foggiest what F11 is supposed to do – it shrunk the IE window bringing back the Task Bar! No more IE taking up every pixel of the screen. I was them able to expand the new IE window to maximum and it filled the screen with the Task Bar intact. I tried to get the RoboForm toolbar back up on the screen, but it would appear even though I unlocked the toolbar(s). Dejected, I started exploring the other suggestions and was not thrilled by the prospects of any of them as the end result might be re-creating the setup I had prior to the original problem. I needed to think on that so I closed IE and went off to get a Starbuck’s coffee. What do they put in that coffee?? When I returned and opened IE, everything was normal!!
Alleluia. I appreciate the help from the you and the other suggestions. There’s help to be had in this forum!

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Now that I think about it, I believe I was thinking about what it takes to remove IE 10.

I always go to the three places I mentioned, in order to make sure that IE 10 is completely removed. I have found that if I removed it only in one place, it wasn’t completely gone, and I couldn’t browse the internet. I always checked all three places, but I don’t recall finding it in more than two of those places.

Once I removed it from all of those places, IE would revert back to the previous version, typically 9.

Perhaps things are different for removing IE 11.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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The base IE version for Win 7 was IE 8 and some later OEM computers came with IE 9, but as an update to IE 9.

Any versions higher than IE 8 on a Win 7 machine are all Windows Updates and are uninstalled from Installed Updates to revert to whatever was the version before the upgrade.

While I’ve turned IE 11 off and on in Turn Windows features on or off to confirm that it would reinstate, I’ve never had the need or inclination to see if the same works for IE 10, but turning it off in ‘features should only be done if an update or direct download fails.

However, when just IE 8 is being used, it’s only listed as Internet Explorer and if you turn that off – it doesn’t auto reinstate and like me, you’ll probably have a job and a half getting it back on.

Can’t remember now if I had to factory reset – but IE has never been in Programs and Features that I know of as it isn’t an installed program.

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