I screwed up something in Windows and this is what it takes to close Microsoft Edge now
I screwed up something in Windows and this is what it takes to close Microsoft Edge now
I accidentally clicked Microsoft Edge on my work computer with Windows 10 and can't close it — it just keeps reopening. It takes File Shredder to stop it from opening again, at least until the computer restarts. Notice the ads, most are extremely sketchy (my frequent reload in previous takes caused ...
Edit: Folks, I keep telling you it's VERY unlikely to be malware.
I’ll update you and apologize to each if my credit card gets wiped or something but I’m quite sure I’m safe, don't worry.
Also sorry for blaming Microsoft for what is apparently my fault.
I accidentally clicked Microsoft Edge on my work computer with Windows 10 and couldn't close it — it just keeps reopening. It takes File Shredder to stop it from opening again, at least until the computer restarts.
Notice the ads, most are extremely sketchy (my frequent reload in previous takes caused the ad server + my work VPN to rate limit me):
- China warns:
%user.currency%is dead! (Yeah, sure. Obvious propaganda. Generic pictures or faked images of a worthless banknote giveaway.) - 63-year-old figured out! (Does not say what but a pic of obviously young-looking feet.)
- Make boatloads of money with AI! (aka auto-trade very uncompetitive options, no guarantees on withdrawals of any wins)
- Save money using solar! (The company is legitimate but the deal on panels is probably not great)
- Buy yourself a great new FPCEILPTBSP! (You can't tell what it is and neither can we! (Apparently TV wall mount))
- Losing hair?
- Millionaire has genius method you can try (but give us money first, making his pic transparent so we can put him in front of
%user.country.flag%was difficult) - Game! Yay! (Microtransactions galore!)
- Get EVERYTHING in your car fixed (by a stock photo mechanic!)
Definitely something wrong with your computer, not normal behavior
The ads are definitely garbage, but the respawning window is something very wrong. Are you sure you dont have some kind of malware that is respawning the window?
Yeah this sounds like OP has malware on the system, definitely.
It’s the cleanest Windows install I’ve ever done, less than a month old, and there is world-renowned, enterprise-level antivirus software running. Malware is pretty much out of the question.
I did install
EdgeRemover(edit: misremembered name) MSEdgeRedirectbut it apparently does not quite work.So yeah, it is caused by a kind of malware, which you pay Microsoft for. Unfortunately, I don't have any other choice due to our required software.
Enterprise IT infrastructure admin here, I've imaged thousands of windows laptops over a decade and dealt with Edge since it was implemented, never seen anything like this. I'm sure you're confident in your abilities but you messed something up real bad or have malware of some kind. No question about it, this is not typical for any version of Edge.
Along with my personal ones I have a few windows 10/11 machines at work I manage and haven't seen this happen, where the window just instantly re-opens like that.
Have you tried clearing the edge appdata folders to fully reset all the settings? Maybe some setting got screwed up.
Also maybe AV going haywire as a cause, lots of third party AV likes to do all kinds of weird stuff with your browsers. Windows defender is the go-to best option for windows these days, so if it turns out to be your third party AV you can pretty safely just get rid of it and switch back to defender.
"which you pay Microsoft for"
No. That's not an Edge feature, that's your shit that you broke yourself. I'm running five computers with Windows 11 and none of them have this behaviour, it's not Microsoft doing partial rollouts as that would be all over tech news.
Don't ask for opinions if you're going to argue with everyone that clearly understand things better than you do.
Delete everything on your computer, do a full format of your hard drive, change all the passwords that computer could have had access to, don't try to delete Edge from your next install of Windows as it's a necessary feature and you just got pwnd for being an idiot that couldn't understand that.
This is textbook browser takeover activity. Is your enterprise level world renown AV setup correctly?
Who is it by the way. Just curious
Edit: by the way the freeware tool you downloaded to remove edge which “didn’t work” sounds like it did work and it took over your browser.
Ding ding ding! OP drank the Kool Aid and felt like they needed to completely remove Edge, they downloaded a tool made to bait gullible users and they're now stuck with a malware and won't admit it.
The question OP needs to ask themselves is, why ask for opinions when they will ignore all of them?
Nope, the tool is FOSS MSEdgeRedirect, very well known and praised. I think it’s purely my config mistake with no third-party wrongdoing and I will live with the consequence of Edge being slightly more annoying whenever I accidentally click it.
Well, my default browser is Firefox and
EdgeRemover(oops, misremembered the name) MSEdgeRedirect (which is FOSS of course, would not install such thing otherwise) does work, in a way – all Help pages, Start Menu searches etc. get redirected to Firefox and DuckDuckGo. I thought it would prevent Edge from opening at all. I don't think it's a browser hijacker.Okay, the company is using ESET’s highest tier and the computers are remotely managed so I’m not sure I would see detection notifications.
textbook browser hijacker
Is your textbook from the 1990s? Pretty sure modern malware is way more stealthy and not at all obvious.
Looks like a known issue https://github.com/rcmaehl/MSEdgeRedirect/issues/315
Thanks. I should have checked earlier before making a fool of myself. A lesson for me, I guess.
Looks like this may be a known issue for some users.
Ah so you also have the fake "china says euro is dead" ads that promote a scam shitcoin. I thought it was a local scam only for my country. I always flag those ads but they always come back with a different URL. Zero control from Microsoft
I once got Top 7 Luxury Cruise in (Landlocked) Czech Republic from Microsoft. Also, The Flight Price From
%user.location%(village of 200 people) To New York Will Surprise You
Permanently Deleted
I dread it every time I open it by accident.
Task manager was faster than waiting + dialogs.Well, Task Manager nor attempting to delete the executable normally helped in my case. Power deleting Edge (including WebView) is obviously a bad idea but faster than finding whatever mistake I made that led to this behavior. I can afford to do dumb stuff because the job is temporary, and I never downloaded any malware (according to VirusTotal) that would cause further problems.
You downloaded a suspicious file of the Internet
anyone can summit code to github and while that stuff does get reviewed alot of malcious stuff goes unnoticed especially on a project of a smaller scale like thjsthat is executing code which is doing maclious things to your Web browser I'm a dumbass on the internet and even I know that's a textbook piece of malware op