iexplore.exe is not present in InternetExplore path (Windows Server 2022)

Question

I have a question about how iexplore.exe is presented in Windows Server 2022. As we know, the IE browser is not part of Windows Server 2022 and Windows 11. In our product, there is some dependency on IE to launch Java script and URLs in the IE external browser.

We have tested on a couple of Windows Server 2022 machines, and they all worked perfectly.

But, recently, we have observed that one of the Windows Server 2022 machine-installed products is not navigating to the URL. When we investigated, we identified that iexplore.exe is not present in the Windows Server 2022 machine. The working machine contains the iexplore.exe in the below path

"C:\Program Files\ Internet Explorer \iexplore.exe"

I am a little confused about whether by default iexplore.exe is part of Windows Server 2022 or not. If not then why interner explorer path in the machine .Can you please provide your inputs? It will be helpful in making an appropriate call.

Answer 1

IE is an optional feature when installing Server 2022. In the RTM version I believe it was automatically installed but I don't have an old machine to find out. However as IE has gone out of support MS has been pushing updates to further get rid of it. From my understanding the EXE is formally removed (if installed) as of the February Edge update. The underlying IE components are still available for apps that show web content but the wrapper executable is gone.

Your code should assume that IE isn't available and ideally just open the URL/HTML file using the Open verb to the shell. This will cause the configured default browser to be used.