Actually, I've never heard of anyone completely, (and successfully) removing Internet Explorer from WinXP.
These people may have come the closest (<A HREF="http://www.tweakxp.com/tweak1241.aspx" target="_new">Remove Internet Explorer</A> and <A HREF="http://sillydog.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2677" target="_new">Disabling IE in Windows XP</A>), but I'm not going to try it out, myself. I'd rather run a version of Linux or another open-source OS, if I was that determined to avoid the IE browser.
You might find <A HREF="http://www.litepc.com/ieradicator.html" target="_new">IEradicator</A> interesting to check out, but it's not for use with Windows XP.
As for popups, don't exclusively pour the blame on IE. Other browsers may be less susceptible, but none of them are completely immune. For example, I'm running Firefox 0.8 the majority of the time, and despite the fact that the Block Popup Windows Feature is enabled, my popup killer program has still shut down hundreds (say, 857 to be exact) of ad server popups over just the past few weeks. Interestingly enough, the majority of those were not classified as IE popups, but popups blocked from common ad server hosts like doubleclick.net.
By the way, I highly recommend using <A HREF="http://download.com.com/3302-7786-10187875.html" target="_new">AdsGone 2004</A> and the TeaTimer feature in <A HREF="http://www.safer-networking.org/index.php?page=home" target="_new">SpybotS&D 1.3</A> to protect the system. And if you somehow still have the Messenger service running, disable it.
Toey
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