WHY???
Most adware, spyware, virius, hackers, and so on... go after Windows Internet Explorer. Its been recommended to use an alternative browser. My choice is Mozilla at www.mozilla.org
If you want to disable IE so no hacker or spammer can use it then do the following by setting up a false proxy
The simplest way is to set up a false proxy by doing the following:
You then cannot get online with IE, but most importanly, NO-ONE else can either.
To reverse this just go to the same place and uncheck the Proxy option.
Any side-effects? Personaly I have only noticed one. I have two computers networked together and I cannot access the internet with my second computer. My second computer is setup to access my proxy through port 10.0.0.1 but for some reason it seems to be trying to connect through the proxy setting 0.0.0.0 - These instructions where originally written for WinXP, I have WinME on both computers.
Maybe I'll figure it out later on. I'll let you know.
this page has an article for Win98 users http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article03-001. And then you can download this utilty IE-OFF
The most drastic option is to remove internet Explorer altogether. Follow this link. Use at your own risk. and if it don't work out, you don't know me. http://www.litepc.com/ieradicator.html
I have used IEradicator with various results over the years. For minimum problems I reccomend only using it on a fresh install of Windows before you install any updates or patches. AND READ THE HELP FILES FIRST!!
One last note: These procedures may interfere with Windows Update.