Wayne Chirnside wrote in a message to Charles Angelich:

 CA> You definitely do _not_ want to just delete apps. My brother did 
 CA> that without asking me first and disabled his computer. (BG)

 WC> I'm using the removal tool provided after being made aware of it. 
 WC> Funny I _got_ Win 3.1 intuitively and rarely ever cracked the 
 WC> manual, things are different now.

 CA> Even old W31 won't allow a simple deletion of Internet Explorer
 CA> v5.x without creating a disaster. :-\

 WC> You have to be careful to _remove_ the right stuff, directories\*.*
 WC> executables and such but not certain DLL's that may be used by 
 WC> other applications.

How do you know what uses what,  though?  It amazes me the sheer number of
files that some applications seem to need these days,  compared to the way
it used to be,  though I guess with the size of apps that's to some degree
understandable.

Under linux,  I know what libraries a file uses,  by using ldd.  Figuring
out what else might use it is another issue that I haven't tackled yet, 
though the Slackware removepkg script seems to be able to deal with that
somehow.

 CA> I'm thinking that when I move to W9x or newer I will need to buy 
 CA> the full install CDs or live with the garbage until such time that 
 CA> I can wipe the drive and install from full CDs.

 WC> Even with most of the garbage still there it performs well but the 
 WC> default desktop needs customizing beyond belief.

Heh.

 WC> Gotta ask in Win9x echo what the file is to modify bootgui=0 so it 
 WC> boots to DOS.

 CA> You have to change attributes on C:\MSDOS.SYS, edit, then change 
 CA> them back again.

 WC> MSDOS.SYS? Wouldn't think you'd know this one for 9x? I'll give it 
 WC> a shot.

Yeah,  it's a _text_ file under 9x...  Ain't that a hoot!

---