Edge Reïnstalls Itself?

It looks like noöne knows quite for certain how to get to the root issue here. I've come up with a few ideas on getting around it, figured I'd bounce them off here in the meantime.
But first, something I'd neglected to mention. I did have a unique uninstallation attempt where it just... didn't work. Checking some logs, it seems an Edge update process was underway when I was trying to uninstall, which prevented it from executing. What's notable here, aside from another edge (heh) case to worry about, is the installer log reported this operation in the same way as the time Edge reïnstalled itself, suggesting it was the same thing happening. I did have a procmon log for it, this time around, and I managed to trace it back, in that instance, to the edgeupdate service... or at least, the same command associated with that service, executed by the service host. Though not outright confirmation, it does reïnforce the theory the reïnstallation was caused by a confused update service.
Now, there are a lot of automatic Edge update processes... There are the edgeupdate and edgeupdatem services, as well as the MicrosoftEdgeUpdateTaskMachineCore and MicrosoftEdgeUpdateTaskMachineUA scheduled tasks. All of these point to the same executable, but call it with different arguments and have different triggers. I don't know what's going on with all of them (would love more info if anyone has any), but we're involving them all just to be safe.

My first idea involves stopping (in case they're running) and disabling (so they can't run again) all of the Edge update services and scheduled tasks. After uninstalling Edge, the script would wait a few seconds to make sure it hadn't come back (for redundancy), and remove it again if it did. To make sure there's nothing getting in the way, it'd check for and end any Edge-related processes before running the uninstallation.
This idea sounds good on paper, but does have some concerns. Most notably, I'm worried that force-closing active update processes might corrupt things in such a way that prevents the uninstallation from working properly, which would be bad. The vigilance check at the end might also fail if it takes longer than the 5 seconds or so the script waits for a returning Edge to be detectable. This might be workable if there's a way to request for active Edge processes to terminate, such that they can close gracefully without breaking anything, but I don't know how to look into that (if anyone has any info, do share!).

My second idea also involves disabling the services and scheduled tasks, but this time we schedule the actual uninstallation for after a restart. This should guarantee that anything Edge-related that was running has terminated properly, and that there's nothing Edge-related planning on running (since it was all disabled). As far as I can think of, the biggest drawback of this approach is I might need to separate the Edge uninstallation into its own .ps1 file. But I could well be missing something.

What do you guys think?

The reg file stops EdgeUpdater from determining what to download (from the CDN sources). If you want to spend all this energy chasing down all the EdgeUpdater entry points... there's a ton.

I wonder if there might just be a way to disable MicrosoftEdgeUpdate.exe for a moment entirely? It seems to be the single process responsible for these automatic updates; if I could just... anaesthetize it. Put it to sleep while I do my work, flush out anything that might be in its system before waking it back up... I don't want to remove it entirely, it's still responsible for maintaining WebView2, as far as I know. And again it's behaved itself post-proper-uninstallation, the only instances of these issues are either when trying to uninstall or immediately after. So, in theory, if I could just make sure it can't do anything during that time, then restore it afterwards...

You say there are "a ton" of entry points to the Edge updater, what more do you know about this? What more can there be than the services and scheduled tasks I found, why even are there multiple services and scheduled tasks for what seems to be the same thing? How are they different? I must know my enemy.

garlin said:

If you want to spend all this energy chasing down all the EdgeUpdater entry points... there's a ton.

Click to expand...

@garlin I simply must know more about this information.

This works for me; I'm sorry, I can't find a single source.

3. Block Edge Installation by Preventing Folder Access

This will deny Windows permission to reinstall Edge in its default location.



Open Command Prompt (Admin) (Win + X → Terminal (Admin)).



Run these commands one by one:



takeown /f "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge" /r /d y

icacls "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge" /inheritance:r /deny EveryoneOI)(CI)F

takeown /f "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\EdgeUpdate" /r /d y

icacls "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\EdgeUpdate" /inheritance:r /deny EveryoneOI)(CI)F

This removes write access to Edge’s installation directories, preventing Windows from reinstalling it.

kelper said:

This works for me; I'm sorry, I can't find a single source.

3. Block Edge Installation by Preventing Folder Access
This will deny Windows permission to reinstall Edge in its default location.

Open Command Prompt (Admin) (Win + X → Terminal (Admin)).

Run these commands one by one:

takeown /f "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge" /r /d y
icacls "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge" /inheritance:r /deny EveryoneOI)(CI)F
takeown /f "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\EdgeUpdate" /r /d y
icacls "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\EdgeUpdate" /inheritance:r /deny EveryoneOI)(CI)F
This removes write access to Edge’s installation directories, preventing Windows from reinstalling it.

Click to expand...

You wont get the emoji’s mate, if it’s in a code box