The 98Lite V1.3 boot screen.

98Lite basically installs Windows 98 without IE 4. It also preserves the original Windows 95 user interface. Cascading file windows are BACK! The desktop is clear of any Microsoft advertising and there is no web browser dominating the interface.

This version of the Windows Explorer shell is MUCH faster than the bloated Internet Explorer desktop. In fact, even applications respond faster because there is much more free memory without Internet Explorer.

Did I mention that Microsoft says this can't be done? They say that removing IE from Windows "breaks" the Windows operating system. Well, 98Lite runs at a pretty damn awesome speed and smoothly for something that is "broken".

Why use 98Lite instead of a Windows 98 normal install? Well... speed, the elimination of zillions of IE 4 bugs, simplicity, and less evil, just to name a few. For a bunch of good reasons why not to install IE, see my Reasons Not to Install IE 4 Page.

There are still some "issues" with 98Lite V1.3, but I have a list of workarounds for problems that I have encountered, see my Mad IE De-integration Lab.

There is no Internet Explorer anywhere. Not only are there no shortcuts to IE or advertising, IE 4 is actually GONE. But it still has the same hardware support and application support of Windows 98.

The Windows Explorer is extracted directly from Windows 95, which is why the "Windows 95" is in the start menu.

There is no Internet control panel because there is no IE and no dial-up networking on this machine.

98Lite does keep a few IE 4 shared files in order to preserve the hyper help system. Hyper bloated help bites, but most of the Windows 98 apps have been converted to use its format of help file. 98Lite still seems a little large, but this hard drive has not been converted to fat32 yet and I did install some components I wanted.

The saddest part of 98Lite );
Well, perhaps not that sad, it is still Windows after all.