Removal of MSN Explorer and Messenger causes Problems

[Dan]

Just today I decided to clean up my harddrive and remove
unused components. I have used the add/remove programs
feature many times before. This time I also went into the
add/remove windows components, and decided that I wanted
to deep-six MSN Explorer and Messenger (since I have IE
and AIM). I checked only the boxes next to these programs
and hit next. The computer said it removed these, and
restarted. When I got back into Windows, my Outlook, IE,
Windows Media Player, and Windows Explorer icons were gone
(from everywhere they were located, not just on the
desktop). I had a great deal of trouble finding out what
happened to them (I ended up having to find something that
ran with the programs in order to create a shortcut for
them). Anyway, to make a long story short, most of my
windows-based programs have been altered (still trying to
find out if any were deleted) and, of course, MSN Explorer
and Messenger are still there. For the life of me, I
cannot understand what happened. Any detailed help would
be great.

Thank you,

-Dan-