Windows Mail (Winmail.exe) Loads at Startup

I understand that Windows Mail does not run on Windows 7, even though the executable is in c:\program files\windows mail\winmail.exe. (It's a hidden file.) Not sure why the executable is still there, but that's not my question.

According to Microsoft/Sysinternals Autoruns, winmail.exe is loading at startup. Is it safe to prevent Windows Mail from loading at startup? (It means backing up the applicable registry keys and then deleting them.)

Before I go ahead and do this, I just want to be sure that I won't be causing myself a problem.

I disabled starting winmail.exe (with AutoRuns) and nothing bad happened. I'll leave things that way for a few days, and if there continue to be no problems I'll permanently prevent winmail from running at startup. Thanks for your help.

I just used AutoRuns for the first time on my Surface Pro 3 and noticed that the hidden/system file C:\Program Files\Windows Mail\WinMail.exe is loading on startup. I don't see it in task manager, and running the executable myself doesn't seem to do anything and it immediately exits, not at all unlike progman.exe in Windows XP SP2 (before SP2 you could actually run Program Manager on Windows XP), or write.exe alias on all versions of Windows from 95 onward.

So no idea why it's there, but I'd but it's for backwards compatibility with programs that were written to need it.