BDE Administrator? what is this?

[Brian]

I recently was having trouble with my dell inspiron 1100 laptop with windows xp home edition, when I discovered an icon for BDE administrator in my control panel. I have no clue how it got there and doubt it is a standard for windows xp home. I do not program and do not deal with databases such as delphi or oracle and would like to know how it got on my computer and how to get rid of it. any help would be appreciated. It is apparently in the following folder C:\Program Files\Common Files\Borland Shared, which contains, or is this something i really need to keep?

[Bill Todd]

Many Dell computers come with either WordPerfect or Corel Office
installed. Both of these products include the BDE.

[C P]

In addition to what Bill said the BDE isn't a program or service that "runs"
on your computer. It is a bunch of code that other software will use when
accessing a database. If you remove the BDE you may break software
installed on your computer (i.e. Corel Office/Word Perfect). While it is
possible some software that USES the BDE is causing problems for your
software, it won't be the BDE itself that's causing the problem. And it's
just as likely that some other software that DOESN'T use the BDE is causing
your problems (i.e. some spyware). Since the BDE takes up so little drive
space, you should probably leave the BDE installed, and look elsewhere for
the source of your computer's problems.