Is it possible to uninstall, then reinstall, IE (Internet Explorer) without losing my favorites and toolbars?

Have a look at this page. it might help solve your problem

You might be able to transfer all your bookmarks and toolbars to another browser and then uninstall IE. After that reinstall it and transfer them back. After that just uninstall the other browser.

Now, how about switching over to chrome or firefox and just leaving IE behind?

Xmarks is a great plug-in to save your bookmarks. It works with IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari; Windows, OS X, and Linux.

I have one desktop with IE, two laptops with Firefoxe, and a Linux Firefox in a virtual machine. They all have the same bookmarks, always in sync.

You can also log in to Xmarks on the web from any computer and see your bookmarks.

xmarks.com

@jaytkay Thanks for the Xmarks tip. Can it sync bookmarks between different browsers (say, IE and Chrome) on the same machine? I didn’t see anything on the Xmarks website about this.
What about toolbars? Are toolbars generally unaffected by an uninstall because they are typically saved off by themselves somewhere?
@anonymous6059 Yes, I do run Chrome also. Some years ago, I tried Firefox but was annoyed by the extremely frequent updates, which took 5, maybe 10 or more minutes to install each time.
@Stinley Great. I’ll try this for the uninstall. Thanks.

Can it sync bookmarks between different browsers (say, IE and Chrome) on the same machine?

Yes, definitely.

I don’t know about toolbars. Firefox has built-in sync for settings and add-ons but I don’t know about IE.

Import all bookmarks to another browser (firefox or chrome or…) as a backup. After that you can uninstall IE without loosing the book marks.
Now download the IE from Microsoft and re-install.
Then you can import your book marks back.