Microsoft Edge Keeps Hijacking My .pdfs

[MWilcox]

Has anyone else had trouble with their Windows 10 machine resetting their default program for .pdfs to Microsoft Edge no matter how many times you tell it Adobe Acrobat Pro DC?  If so, have you found a fix or do I just have to "deal with it".  It's getting to be very frustrating -- some days I change it back a dozen times or more.  If anyone has any suggestions, I will be very grateful.  Thank you.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

Yes, that's correct.

MS will continually redirect URLs to their browser. Tends to happen when they roll out a large enough update to Windows OS.

And that's why it's important for us users to complain to our government authorities:  I know here in the states, it might take a while for our agency to rap a company's knuckles, but eventually they do and it can have strong consequences for the company; the software could become banned on government computers which is several million in the US.

So get those complaints in! (See US and EU links above)

And don't forget to mention that eventually MS doesn't respect the user's choice and flips it back to their browser — without warning.

[StreamFlow]

I understand why Microsoft dosent do anything to correct this, but I dont understand why Adobe does not do anything to correct this.  We were so frustated that we finally had to dump Acrobat and went to Foxit.  The problem does not effect Foxit PDF editor.  Adobe just lost around 200 Acrobat Pro subscriptions from our company alone and they don't seem really seem to care.  I dont get it!

[frazzlesnap]

I don't think that Adobe can make an alteration that will be respected by the OS to override the behavior that is occuring. Legally, I mean. I haven't experienced this particular issue, but I have had other things get hijacked by Edge. I've been trying to uninstall it for a little while now, mainly through registry edits, and it still won't leave. The antitrust lawsuit back in the 90s that Microsoft lost apparently didn't dissuade them from getting back into attempted monopoly mode. The EU has successfully gone after them, but we here in the US are still at their mercy...

[StreamFlow]

The only way that I know of to get rid of edge is to reinstall windows and when it asks you what country you are in, pick out a EU country.  You can still select english as the install language.  The EU prohibits Microsoft feom playing these games.  This is supposed to help a lot with other software as well in terms of what they can load on your machine without your permission and what data they can collect from you.

[frazzlesnap]

I'm pretty sure that I can eventually get rid of it through the registry. I'm just being super cautious. I've been editing the Windows registry since they first introduced it. I converted the Windows flag in NT 4.0 into a star using the registry, back when visual UI components were stored that way, for instance. I've never run into something I wasn't able to handle. But... Windows 11 worries me. I'm dreading the full integration of Copilot with the OS. I actually did get rid of Edge on one system, briefly, but I forgot to make a particular registry edit and it reinstalled from Windows Update. I tried to go back and redo my previous steps, and it no longer worked. Grrrr.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

... The antitrust lawsuit back in the 90s that Microsoft lost apparently didn't dissuade them from getting back into attempted monopoly mode. The EU has successfully gone after them, but we here in the US are still at their mercy...

By @frazzlesnap

This is an excellent example of how our US votes in November affect our daily lives.

From my seat "inside the Beltway," we saw an exodus of good federal employees from our agencies under the previous administration. Today, there aren't enough people to do the work, whether it's prosecuting those breaking our water pollution laws or our anti-trust/commerce laws.

[frazzlesnap]

You are 100% correct. We'll have to see how things go, and not be passive onlookers, but actively involved in the process. But I digress. You always make good points.

[Eli35931475o72q]

I know this is an old thread, but here is something to consider.  Some MSI's have the autorepair set. If someone does a WMI query for the Win32_Product class, it can cause those MSI's to do a repair which then takes over the PDF association.  I have seen this in our own environment.  We found in the event logs that on reboots there are several MSI's installing again. In some cases it will update the installed date of those applications to that day's date.  

We found that one application was set to be uninstalled via GPO but was failing and then kicking off the automatic MSI repair and therefore taking over the PDF association, and sometimes, just setting it to nothing as you have commented.

To solve this you must find out what is causing the Win32_Product query (script?), and/or if there is an install or uninstall failing from a group policy or startup script. (look in the application event log for events 1035, 7035, 7036)

Here is the documentation that supports this behavior:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-US/troubleshoot/windows-server/admin-development/windows-installer-re...

Another site that explains the same behavior and how people installing with powershell or other scripts can cause this behavior.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/scripting/use-powershell-to-find-installed-software/

The particular paragraph: "If you choose to query Win32_Product class by using Get-WmiObject, you’ll find yourself [Bad] waiting for your query (or application) to return [Ugly] a consistency check of packages that are installed as it attempts to verify and repair installs. (For more information, see Event log message indicates that the Windows Installer reconfigured all installed applications).:

[frazzlesnap]

Thank you for that informative post. I think it will help some people. I'm going to do some reading tonight at home, based on what you've cited.