European regulators have ended their last pending antitrust case against Microsoft Corp. as the U.S. software maker agreed to let Europeans choose from a menu of Web browsers that compete with its Internet Explorer.

The deal announced Wednesday lets Microsoft avert additional fines. It has already paid 1.7 billion euros in EU fines over the past decade.

Microsoft said it will start sending updates in March to Windows computers in Europe so that when PC users log on, they will see a pop-up screen asking them to pick one or more of 12 Web browsers to download and install. People who buy new PCs will see the screen when they start up for the first time.

The top five browsers _ Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla's Firefox, Google Inc.'s Chrome, Apple Inc.'s Safari and Opera, will be given more prominent placement on the screen. The selections will rotate from computer to computer, so none of those five browsers will always be first.

This mechanism will be used for five years in the 27-nation European Union plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. Microsoft could be fined 10 percent of its annual revenue if it doesn't stick to its commitment.

In return, the European Commission agreed to drop charges it filed against Microsoft in January that said installing Internet Explorer, or IE, as part of the Windows operating system, which runs most of the world's computers, gave Microsoft an unfair advantage.

Users in the U.S. and elsewhere won't see a change, however. Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, said that an older antitrust case in the U.S. had already determined that Microsoft didn't need to separate its browser from the Windows operating system. And regulators in other regions, he said, might want a different approach.

The deal came on the same day that U.S. regulators piled on new antitrust charges against Intel Corp., seeking to end what the Federal Trade Commission described as a decade of illegal sales tactics that have crippled rivals and kept prices for computer chips artificially high.

Although Wednesday's deal with Microsoft ends all formal antitrust charges brought by European Union regulators, the EU is still investigating a complaint that Microsoft isn't sharing enough technical information that would help rival companies design software that works well in IE browsers and with Windows, Office and other programs.

The EU said it would watch to see if rivals benefit from the changes as it wrap up its investigation.

With that, Microsoft closes the latest chapter in what has been a long _ and expensive _ antitrust epic.