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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : MS Edge keeps starting by itself....
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9486 |
This one is weird, and I have not seen this issue before. I leave my PC on 24/7, and just turn the monitors off and on. I'm on W10 Pro x64 22H2. I've got W10 standard AV enabled, and it auto-updates and reports no problems. I've got Spybot installed and fully up to date, and a full scan reports no problems. However, each morning when I turn the monitors back on again, MS Edge is running with various tabs opening, usually playing some video about something in the news. I've never seen this kind of automatic starting of Edge before, and the above basic security checks would seem to at least SUGGEST that I don't have a nastie(virus or malware) running on the system - I did the AV and Spybot scans yesterday, and they both reported a clean system. But an uncommanded opening of something like Edge, does reak somewhat, of a malware or virus, cos that is very odd and should not be happening. My default browser is Opera, it's not even MS Edge, so WTF?!   Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| robert.rozee Guru  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 2399 |
typing "MS Edge keeps starting by itself" into google (without the quotes) returns many results, suggesting this is not an uncommon happening. if i were microsoft i would be using this as a yet another means to push a little bit more advertising on customers in order to generate revenue - which microsoft needs as the win10/11 product is essentially free. from what i have read over the years, microsoft makes use of a number of mechanisms in a fairly random pattern to do this, with what gets turned on and when also depending upon your locality (country) as well as what applications you regularly use and what those applications are used for. cheers, rob :-) |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9486 |
I did find one video where they use Task Manager/Startup, select Microsoft Edge, and DISABLE it, so it never loads in the background at startup. Once I rebooted and turned on my monitors this morning, no Edge running - hopefully that is all that is needed to nuke it. (Bit of a rant start...) I might have to have another serious look at Linux Mint - lots of people are now with W10 support ending in October, and all many people want, is something to browse the web and do their emails. Mint can do that with it's eyes closed, and it is similar enough in look and feel to Windows, that the people I have moved onto it, never had any issues using it. I hate all the cloud-based stuff of W11(yes, I know there are ways to bypass that), but I feel Windows is becoming more and more about THEM saying what you can do and run on your machine, rather then YOU deciding what you want to run on your machine. The amount of hoop-jumping in the form of changing gpedit or registry hacks you have to do, to force W11 especially, to settle down and behave itself if you want to run some bit of software, are starting to become insane IMHO. I'm probably gonna have to setup a W11 machine(dammit!), simply as I need to be familiar with it, when people running it, ring me with problems. But it's not something I really WANT to do. As I have said before, the only thing keeping me on Windows NOW, is my CAD software that will not run under Linux, or under WINE(it is unstable and just crashes at random). My CAD stuff DOES run perfectly inside a VM under Linux, but it seems - at least to me - to be a bit absurd to run a VM Windows machine inside Linux, just to run some Windows software - why not just use Windows in the first place? There were also issues last time I tried a VM with my CAD in it under Mint, where the CAD software could not print to the local Linux printer - it just refused to do it, and the VM Windows could not "See" the printer on Linux, despite all those extra tools, utilities and options being set. That was Windows XP in a VM. I seem to recall having better luck with that, using a later version of Windows, such as 7 or 8. I could setup a VM W8 I suppose, and tinker with that. But like I said, it's a bit of a dilemma(for me!) if you have to run a VM Windows inside of Linux to run something, why not just use Windows and forget about the Linux bit. It's quite a confusing thought process!  (End of rant.) Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| ville56 Senior Member  Joined: 08/06/2022 Location: AustriaPosts: 217 |
Grogster, I really can't find a reason of not using W11 in your rant part of the last post. Yes, the OS is made for the mass of dummies to have it out of the box on a piece of hardware and have it running as long as possible without any hitch. Serious users, like business users, can taylor it to what is needed. The cloud part is something you can avoid, even my accounts are purely local. The only thing i use from MS are the updates. And if you really want to, you can even avoid the licence fee, but then you are on the illegal track. And why do you bother running W11 in a VM? This is the way to go nowadays, as the hardware is usually more capable then you ever will demand and memory is cheap. I've been for 20 years in banking IT and we had server farms running e.g. ESX for thousands of Windows and Linux servers all virtually. It had so many advantages over the old 1:1 HW/OS solution. And, IMHO, it has advantages also for the hobbyist. Even though the EXS solution is more appealing to me than e.g. VirtualBox, it is not affordable for me. But VirtualBox is fine, does what it should do, is relatively stable and not too resource hungry. Gerald 73 de OE1HGA, Gerald |
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Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7504 |
Depending on the hardware, some of the "full" Linux distros can now start to push the lower-powered machines. If your favourite computer happens to be at the lower end of the scale I'd suggest MX Linux rather than Mint. It really is excellent. This distro is based on Debian (as is Ubuntu and, therefore, Mint) and they have concentrated on improving the XFCE desktop. This is pretty lightweight anyway, but they have made a really professional job of it. You can also run Fluxbox or the KDE desktop on this distro. I've had the latter (which is pretty heavyweight) running on a little fanless box with only 4MB of RAM and it seems stable. The MX Linux team have made all three desktops look very similar, which is rather nice. :) I don't know where you stand on the Systemd discussion, but for those who prefer the traditional startup scripts system MX Linux is ideal. Systemd is provided but by default it is disabled. You don't have that choice with the big distros now, it's running by default. It puts a "shim" in place so programs that depend on Systemd will still run on MX Linux even though Systemd isn't actually there. You can download a "live filesystem" version and boot it from a USB stick (as you can with Mint). This is a great way to have a play and test it out. If you are considering Mint then I'd recommend that you also try this. I prefer it in many ways. MX Linux here... I've decided to keep a small machine for Windows (10 for as long as I can, but I have a W11 box too - currently unused) and do day to day stuff on Linux. The Windows box is intended to be relegated to stuff that simply isn't available for Linux, such as a decent, free 2D CAD package and Minecraft! I tried virtual machines a long time ago and came to the conclusion that a separate machine is definitely better most of the time. These little fanless PCs are remarkably cheap now. . Edited 2025-04-08 17:11 by Mixtel90 Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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hitsware2 Guru Joined: 03/08/2019 Location: United StatesPosts: 715 |
Get a Win PC for anything that cannot do without it . ( woofer tester for me ) NEVER connect it to internet ! my site |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9486 |
@ ville56 - You have a good point(or two) there.  @ Mixtel90 - Never heard of MX Linux, but then - there are SO MANY distro's when it comes to Linux! @ hitsware2 - Yeah, I still use Win XP SP3 for low-power FM radio station setups! It's small, fast on even "Old" hardware of today, and is perfect as an OS for stand-alone radio-station automation software(google Zara Radio). Just never connect it to the LAN or the WAN as you say! It's sole purpose in life, is feeding audio to the input of an FM transmitter. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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