@atom Time to install XP Antispy.
Seriously, XP had a reputation for being overloaded with bloat back in the day. Ironically, its now remembered as simple and uncomplicated, because all versions that came after were even worse in that regard.
@kirby @guenther @atom
You might be right about this happening earlier than in XP — I was never an avid Windows user, I don't think I even ever had anything newer than 95 and older than 8 on my personal devices, but definitely not in 95 — that one didn't even ship with IE, you had to download either it or Netscape Navigator — most probably why they decided to make it pre-installed, but probably in one of the updates. And it wasn't that tightly integrated yet.