How to forcefully remove Microsoft Edge Browser the hard way from your Windows device

Microsoft Edge is a new web browser developed by Microsoft and it replaces Internet Explorer in Windows 10. Edge is also included in Windows 10 and is the default web browser. In this article, we shall discuss How to forcefully remove Microsoft Edge Browser the hard way from your Windows device. Please see Task Kill vs Stop Process: How to search for a service PID, Edge GPO settings: All Group Policies available to configure Microsoft Edge Settings, and How to configure a new tab page URL in Microsoft Edge.

Note: Internet Explorer is still available on Windows 10 in order to maintain compatibility with older websites and intranet sites that require ActiveX and other Microsoft legacy web technologies. According to Microsoft, the development of new features for Internet Explorer has ceased. Why can’t I uninstall Microsoft Edge?

Since the forced installation of Microsoft Edge, you may find it impossible to uninstall Microsoft Edge, in the latest Windows 10 and at the moment cannot be terminated or uninstalled using the regular Uninstall method. However, there are some workarounds and some third-party tools capable of disabling Microsoft Edge as discussed below.

Forcefully remove the Microsoft Edge Browser

Currently, there are no GPO settings for disabling this. If you run across one in the future, please let me know via the comment session.

Note: You can terminate the Microsoft Edge browser from the settings page as shown below or just have the web browser closed.

As discussed previously, here are some other workaround for this.

Rename Edge Files and delete some other related files: To disable Microsoft Edge, perform the following steps below.

First, we have to ensure that the File in the folder are read-only. Navigate to the following path as shown below.

- "C:\Windows\SystemApps\" folder and find the "Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe" folder. 
- Right-click it and 
- Select "Properties"

Ensure the file has read only rights attached as shown below

Next, open the folder y double clicking on it as shown below “Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe”
– Click on “View”, and
– Enable the “File name extensions” option as shown below

Next, you will have to return the following files “MicrosoftEdge.exe” to “MicrosoftEdge.exe.old”.

Change File name extension

You will be asked to confirm changes as shown below. If you are prompted with the following error, kindly use the steps described here to correct it.

If you run into issues such as “You require permission from TrustedInstaller to make changes to this file, please follow the steps described in this article.

After performing the steps above, you should be able to rename the executable file as shown below

Even at this step, Microsoft Edge still launches. So in order to make it completely useless, you will need to delete some of the files the folder. In this way, web search via Microsoft Edge will no longer be possible.

Now as you can see from the Taskbar, the icon is gone and the application is no longer capable of launching.

Please see How to configure static page in Microsoft Edge browser via Local Group Policy on Windows, and Install Microsoft Edge on Ubuntu: Manage Edge Browser on Linux.

Using a third-party tool

As discussed previously, there is a possibility to uninstall Microsoft Edge by using a 3rd party tool. This can be downloaded from Winaero.

After downloading the file, you will need to extract it. Use the Windows default tool or 7Zip.

Right-click on the folder and select “extract”

Now that the folder has been extracted, we can now run the script "uninstall edge.cmd" as shown below.

If you are an Administrator on the system, you can double-click on the script on the fly.

If this is not the case, you will have to launch the Command Prompt as an administrator and thereafter run the script.

Because, I have previous changed the owner of the file and removed most associated file, this will fail as shown below.

It is a desired behaviour, I just wanted to show you guys how this is done.

Unfortunatly, since the recent forced installation of Microsoft Edge, it is no longer possible to uninstall it via PowerShell as shown below.

At least, I hope this helps on how to forcefully remove Microsoft Edge Browser the hard way from your Windows device. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comment session.