So I'm determined to remove windows explorer completely for my system, partly for the novelty of doing so and partly to decrease memory consumption. I've already switched to using bbLean for a default shell, and FreeCommander as a file manager. So my question is, what other considerations should I be aware of before I completely nuke it?

Will I have to muck about in the registry, are there any resource files that depend on explorer, and will not using explorer allow me to get rid of other processes or resources that will only be taking up space?

Finally, will trashing explorer affect anything else about XP other than the shell and the file manager?

i think many have tried but encountered headaches along the way ... explorer is a core file that has many dependencies ... i also wanted to do such thing by using 2xplorer or xplorer2 by zabkat ... but didn't push for it much ...

I don't think this a good idea at all. If you aren't running explorer, it won't suck your RAM, and how big is it that it really matters on the hard disk? So many applications depend on it that it would probably be more trouble than it's worth.

I went down that exact path before, although I used the Aston Shell for about a month before switching back to Explorer because I was losing my familiarity with Windows in general in order to help people with their problems.

I wanted to reduce memory consumption as well, but ultimately just got more RAM and use lightweight software, problem solved.