7 ms·

Windows update resets your default programs so they can suggest using Edge

65 points by aminozuur 6y ago

sys_64738 6y ago
The M$ Edge PDF reader is a thing of beauty, IMO. I much prefer it to the Adobe Reader which is network challenged. Edge can still use the PDF when the windows share is offline.
ShradhaSingh 6y ago
I stopped the edge update in between and my windows got corrupt.
- LeifCarrotson 6y ago
  Same, I had a BSOD on every boot halfway through the Windows logo part of the process. I had to make a Windows flash drive with another computer and do a repair install to get my PC back. And the first thing I saw on the first successful boot was "Welcome to Edge!"
  - bserge 6y ago
    The Windows 10 bootloader likes living on the... edge. One wrong step and it's toast, two wrong steps and not even recovery can help you :D I found installing Windows 10 in legacy (not UEFI) BIOS mode makes it more stable, and the various recovery tools (sfc, bootrec, etc) actually work. Strange, but this is Windows, so maybe not that strange.
- anaganisk 6y ago
  slow clap Microsoft
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
moksly 6y ago
I may be in the minority here, but I actually don’t mind that. I probably wouldn’t get around to choosing edge for it, if it didn’t. Hell, I probably wouldn’t even know how for most things. Heh.
anaganisk 6y ago
This is definitely not the right way to do it, but this is one of the very few ways to bring down Google's monopoly, in browser or search market share. Keeping aside privacy issues, as and more data users feed to Bing, more powerful it can become.
- capableweb 6y ago
  Abusing your market position to bring down another entity is not the way. If Google is truly holding a monopoly, the lawmakers/enforcers need to fix this instead.
- jdbernard 6y ago
  Microsoft basically gave up on "bringing down Google's monopoly" when they switched to using Google's browser as the foundation for their product, at least in the browser market.
shanehoban 6y ago
I update my windows maybe once a year, or once every 2 years or so. I just got too tired of background network activity, and bad windows updates. I also use my mobile hotspot due to my current living situation, so when gaming, network activity can be detrimental. Now I use simplewall by henry++ [0] to block all network activity (whitelist) - and my god it just works amazingly well. Can't recommend it enough. Easily blocks updates too, and even blocks edge, live.com, and linkedin, which I really don't care for! [1] https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Pretty sure the user is wrong about what caused this dialog. It was the recent Firefox update. Firefox 80 added being a PDF reader as a Windows-selectable preference, as seen in this dialog. Whenever a new app for a given filetype is added, Windows asks you which one you want to use. While Edge getting a special category at the top is annoying, this showcases the uphill battle Microsoft faces, where they get blamed for the actions of other software and user stupidity on a regular basis, because people don't understand how Windows works, in general.
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  Indeed, Windows may not be perfect but most of issues reported by users seem to be caused by lack of knowledge or experience or some misbehaving third party app. Every job I had where we used Windows 10 we had no issues and when there were issues, it was always caused by faulty hardware, crappy corporate bloatware or some misbehaving or poorly configured third party app. I know it's fashionable on HN to hate microsoft and windows because of the "muh embrace, extend, extinguish and candy crush" meme, but objectively they make a solid OS for consumers (optimus graphics switching works flawlessly on our laptops) and developers (WSL) considering the vast hardware combinations it has to run on.
- andreareina 6y ago
  I'm sure a lot of it is also Microsoft doing things like not giving its users a choice in whether or not they upgrade, or reboot.
  - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    Sure but then users would postpone updates forever then blame microsoft when they get pwned by some vunerability that has already been fixed for three months. Seems like either way, microsoft just can't catch a break.
    - dividedbyzero 6y ago
      Seems to work well enough on macOS though (where you could do exactly that)
pcdoodle 6y ago
Remember when they called it "My Computer". Now it's called "This PC". No ownership, only tenancy.
- andylynch 6y ago
  To be fair - I do think this term is a better description, eg for the company desktop you are using, the pc you happen to be on in a library, at a friend’s place etc etc. I would also think that from an ownership perspective, the number of Windows PCs owned by the individuals using them is going to be a minority (I’d love to find some numbers on this but do not think they are reported?)
- m_fayer 6y ago
  I don't know why this is getting downvoted - it's an eagle-eyed spot of some subtle-but-important language being shifted, sneakily, right underneath us. Amazing how a company as big as MS can influence cultural expectations and normative parameters through nothing but a tiny tweak in language.
- bserge 6y ago
  Good catch.
capableweb 6y ago
I noticed this as well. Not only is it again asking me what browser I still prefer (still Firefox, thanks for asking), it shows it in a special category, at the top, and took the liberty to add itself to the bottom bar (next to the start button), without any questions asked. Just appeared after the update. I thought Microsoft learnt it's lesson already with forcing people to use their browser, but seems not.
ffpip 6y ago
The thing is I tried out Edge because Microsoft said it is private, etc. Chrome is less noisy than Edge. When I opened the new Edge, requests were sent out to taboola.com , doubleclick.com, and other ad networks. And who wants ads on the home page? It's so slow to load. Instead of pushing it down out throats, if they say what is actually better, people will use it. Is it faster, more private, etc?
jeroenhd 6y ago
What's strange or new about this? A new program was installed to deal with PDFs so Windows asks if you want to use a different program for opening PDFs. I can do without the special treatment for Edge though, there's nothing that makes it special other than that you don't need to install Chrome on new Windows machines anymore. From a technical standpoint, Edgium and Edge are significantly different. The migration to Edgium was actually surprisingly smooth, I've gotten Chrome updates that broke more spectacularly and that's the exact same browser. As another comment here already suggested, there's a good chance this has nothing to do with Microsoft because Firefox registered itself as a PDF handler in the last major update.
dminvs 6y ago
They turned Skype auto-start back on as well. I guess we're back to the old MSFT.
- ffpip 6y ago
  They never turned it off.
  - imglorp 6y ago
    Wait, haven't they been ignoring/deprecating Skype for a couple years now, pushing towards Lync? Or is that only business?
    - sofixa 6y ago
      You're so far behind. They rebranded Lync to Skype for Business, which at least looked like regular Skype, trying to target younger people, but really sucked. Then they abandoned SfB and now we're on Teams, which imitates Slack and integrates SharePoint and all that shit, but works relatively well even if it's UX is pretty poor, there are bugs and it's cloud-only, contrary to the old SfB.
  - DarthGhandi 6y ago
    I believe they reset the startup setting then because I noticed this recently after an update and had to turn it off again.
- tasubotadas 6y ago
  " when of equal intensity, things of a more negative nature have a greater effect on one's psychological state and processes than neutral or positive things." -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias "Research indicates that at the subconscious level, the mind tends to focus on the optimistic; while at the conscious level, it tends to focus on the negative." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollyanna_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollyanna_principle
GnarfGnarf 6y ago
I am so fed up with Windows changing my default program associations every week. I set PDF to Adobe Reader. Next week it's back to #$%@ Edge again. I set PNG, JPG to HyperSnap. Next week it's bloody Edge again. I have written a script to reset the associations, but it does not work. :: need double-% so it doesn't mistake it as a parameter of this batch file ftype htmlfile="C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" "%%1" ftype jpegfile="C:\Program Files\HyperSnap 8\HprSnap8.exe" "%%1" ftype pngfile="C:\Program Files\HyperSnap 8\HprSnap8.exe" "%%1" ftype AcroExch.Document.DC="C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat Reader DC\Reader\AcroRd32.exe" "%%1"
- atraac 6y ago
  I use 4 separate machines with Windows 10 and it never changed my default handler for any file extension...
  - GnarfGnarf 6y ago
    Do you allow regular Windows updates?
- MikusR 6y ago
  It doesn't work because you are setting associations outside of settings window.
  - GnarfGnarf 6y ago
    Sorry, I don't understand. What Settings window should I use?
    - MikusR 6y ago
      https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4028161/windows-10-change-default-programs https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4028161/windows-10-...
bserge 6y ago
Windows update does a lot of things. Resets defaults, resets your Ethernet adapter settings, deletes partitions, makes the OS unbootable (tip: use Legacy BIOS mode instead of UEFI, it's more stable and actually fixable with recovery tools), and more. If you're forced to use Windows, Microsoft takes it as you liking their superb OS, so you gotta live with it, let the hate boil, until you finally switch away forever.
- gruez 6y ago
  >Windows update does a lot of things [...] All of this is a non-issue on LTSC, since all the updates are security-only. Regular Windows has "feature" updates every 6 months, which do what you described.
  - bhj 6y ago
    Not to mention the performance difference between Pro and LTSC is night and day on an HDD. All that extra overhead is much less noticeable with an SSD, sure, but it's still there.
Ahmd72 6y ago
I was brought up in a Windows environment, from home to school to friends, it was pretty much everywhere. Now that we are so used to it do we realize how horrible Windows OS is, to give an example my Windows 10 continuously asks me to update and then when I try it fails. So I stopped doing it and then they came up with feature updates, the worst it automatically downloads itself even when I have blocked Windows Update service and then asks me to restart my computer to install it. If I leave my computer plugged in and locked which is part of any normal person's workflow, it will automatically restart and then try updating which it fails. No dialog box shows up telling the update failed, no reason why the update failed just that it failed. The cycle then continues again, I wish I could sue them so bad that they will start caring about this kind of stuff.
- Narishma 6y ago
  I have a similar issue on one of my laptops. Windows Update always fails to install those big updates. I think it's because it reboots into some sort of safe mode where power management isn't active, so the laptop quickly overheats and shuts down. My work around is to set the connection to metered so it doesn't automatically download those big updates. It's been working so far.
  - Ahmd72 6y ago
    Doesn't work for me, are you talking about security or feature updates?
    - Narishma 6y ago
      Feature updates.
sjg007 6y ago
I still can't print with windows 10. Tried everything. Canon MF2470 networked or USB.

65 points by aminozuur 6y ago

The M$ Edge PDF reader is a thing of beauty, IMO. I much prefer it to the Adobe Reader which is network challenged. Edge can still use the PDF when the windows share is offline.

ShradhaSingh 6y ago

I stopped the edge update in between and my windows got corrupt.

LeifCarrotson 6y ago
Same, I had a BSOD on every boot halfway through the Windows logo part of the process. I had to make a Windows flash drive with another computer and do a repair install to get my PC back. And the first thing I saw on the first successful boot was "Welcome to Edge!"
- bserge 6y ago
  The Windows 10 bootloader likes living on the... edge. One wrong step and it's toast, two wrong steps and not even recovery can help you :D I found installing Windows 10 in legacy (not UEFI) BIOS mode makes it more stable, and the various recovery tools (sfc, bootrec, etc) actually work. Strange, but this is Windows, so maybe not that strange.
anaganisk 6y ago
slow clap Microsoft
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

moksly 6y ago

I may be in the minority here, but I actually don’t mind that. I probably wouldn’t get around to choosing edge for it, if it didn’t. Hell, I probably wouldn’t even know how for most things. Heh.

anaganisk 6y ago

This is definitely not the right way to do it, but this is one of the very few ways to bring down Google's monopoly, in browser or search market share. Keeping aside privacy issues, as and more data users feed to Bing, more powerful it can become.

capableweb 6y ago
Abusing your market position to bring down another entity is not the way. If Google is truly holding a monopoly, the lawmakers/enforcers need to fix this instead.
jdbernard 6y ago
Microsoft basically gave up on "bringing down Google's monopoly" when they switched to using Google's browser as the foundation for their product, at least in the browser market.

shanehoban 6y ago

I update my windows maybe once a year, or once every 2 years or so. I just got too tired of background network activity, and bad windows updates. I also use my mobile hotspot due to my current living situation, so when gaming, network activity can be detrimental. Now I use simplewall by henry++ [0] to block all network activity (whitelist) - and my god it just works amazingly well. Can't recommend it enough. Easily blocks updates too, and even blocks edge, live.com, and linkedin, which I really don't care for! [1] https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

Pretty sure the user is wrong about what caused this dialog. It was the recent Firefox update. Firefox 80 added being a PDF reader as a Windows-selectable preference, as seen in this dialog. Whenever a new app for a given filetype is added, Windows asks you which one you want to use. While Edge getting a special category at the top is annoying, this showcases the uphill battle Microsoft faces, where they get blamed for the actions of other software and user stupidity on a regular basis, because people don't understand how Windows works, in general.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago
Indeed, Windows may not be perfect but most of issues reported by users seem to be caused by lack of knowledge or experience or some misbehaving third party app. Every job I had where we used Windows 10 we had no issues and when there were issues, it was always caused by faulty hardware, crappy corporate bloatware or some misbehaving or poorly configured third party app. I know it's fashionable on HN to hate microsoft and windows because of the "muh embrace, extend, extinguish and candy crush" meme, but objectively they make a solid OS for consumers (optimus graphics switching works flawlessly on our laptops) and developers (WSL) considering the vast hardware combinations it has to run on.
andreareina 6y ago
I'm sure a lot of it is also Microsoft doing things like not giving its users a choice in whether or not they upgrade, or reboot.
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  Sure but then users would postpone updates forever then blame microsoft when they get pwned by some vunerability that has already been fixed for three months. Seems like either way, microsoft just can't catch a break.
  - dividedbyzero 6y ago
    Seems to work well enough on macOS though (where you could do exactly that)

pcdoodle 6y ago

Remember when they called it "My Computer". Now it's called "This PC". No ownership, only tenancy.

andylynch 6y ago
To be fair - I do think this term is a better description, eg for the company desktop you are using, the pc you happen to be on in a library, at a friend’s place etc etc. I would also think that from an ownership perspective, the number of Windows PCs owned by the individuals using them is going to be a minority (I’d love to find some numbers on this but do not think they are reported?)
m_fayer 6y ago
I don't know why this is getting downvoted - it's an eagle-eyed spot of some subtle-but-important language being shifted, sneakily, right underneath us. Amazing how a company as big as MS can influence cultural expectations and normative parameters through nothing but a tiny tweak in language.
bserge 6y ago
Good catch.

capableweb 6y ago

I noticed this as well. Not only is it again asking me what browser I still prefer (still Firefox, thanks for asking), it shows it in a special category, at the top, and took the liberty to add itself to the bottom bar (next to the start button), without any questions asked. Just appeared after the update. I thought Microsoft learnt it's lesson already with forcing people to use their browser, but seems not.

ffpip 6y ago

The thing is I tried out Edge because Microsoft said it is private, etc. Chrome is less noisy than Edge. When I opened the new Edge, requests were sent out to taboola.com , doubleclick.com, and other ad networks. And who wants ads on the home page? It's so slow to load. Instead of pushing it down out throats, if they say what is actually better, people will use it. Is it faster, more private, etc?

jeroenhd 6y ago

What's strange or new about this? A new program was installed to deal with PDFs so Windows asks if you want to use a different program for opening PDFs. I can do without the special treatment for Edge though, there's nothing that makes it special other than that you don't need to install Chrome on new Windows machines anymore. From a technical standpoint, Edgium and Edge are significantly different. The migration to Edgium was actually surprisingly smooth, I've gotten Chrome updates that broke more spectacularly and that's the exact same browser. As another comment here already suggested, there's a good chance this has nothing to do with Microsoft because Firefox registered itself as a PDF handler in the last major update.

dminvs 6y ago

They turned Skype auto-start back on as well. I guess we're back to the old MSFT.

ffpip 6y ago
They never turned it off.
- imglorp 6y ago
  Wait, haven't they been ignoring/deprecating Skype for a couple years now, pushing towards Lync? Or is that only business?
  - sofixa 6y ago
    You're so far behind. They rebranded Lync to Skype for Business, which at least looked like regular Skype, trying to target younger people, but really sucked. Then they abandoned SfB and now we're on Teams, which imitates Slack and integrates SharePoint and all that shit, but works relatively well even if it's UX is pretty poor, there are bugs and it's cloud-only, contrary to the old SfB.
- DarthGhandi 6y ago
  I believe they reset the startup setting then because I noticed this recently after an update and had to turn it off again.
tasubotadas 6y ago
" when of equal intensity, things of a more negative nature have a greater effect on one's psychological state and processes than neutral or positive things." -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias "Research indicates that at the subconscious level, the mind tends to focus on the optimistic; while at the conscious level, it tends to focus on the negative." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollyanna_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollyanna_principle

GnarfGnarf 6y ago

I am so fed up with Windows changing my default program associations every week. I set PDF to Adobe Reader. Next week it's back to #$%@ Edge again. I set PNG, JPG to HyperSnap. Next week it's bloody Edge again. I have written a script to reset the associations, but it does not work. :: need double-% so it doesn't mistake it as a parameter of this batch file ftype htmlfile="C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" "%%1" ftype jpegfile="C:\Program Files\HyperSnap 8\HprSnap8.exe" "%%1" ftype pngfile="C:\Program Files\HyperSnap 8\HprSnap8.exe" "%%1" ftype AcroExch.Document.DC="C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat Reader DC\Reader\AcroRd32.exe" "%%1"

atraac 6y ago
I use 4 separate machines with Windows 10 and it never changed my default handler for any file extension...
- GnarfGnarf 6y ago
  Do you allow regular Windows updates?
MikusR 6y ago
It doesn't work because you are setting associations outside of settings window.
- GnarfGnarf 6y ago
  Sorry, I don't understand. What Settings window should I use?
  - MikusR 6y ago
    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4028161/windows-10-change-default-programs https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4028161/windows-10-...

bserge 6y ago

Windows update does a lot of things. Resets defaults, resets your Ethernet adapter settings, deletes partitions, makes the OS unbootable (tip: use Legacy BIOS mode instead of UEFI, it's more stable and actually fixable with recovery tools), and more. If you're forced to use Windows, Microsoft takes it as you liking their superb OS, so you gotta live with it, let the hate boil, until you finally switch away forever.

gruez 6y ago
>Windows update does a lot of things [...] All of this is a non-issue on LTSC, since all the updates are security-only. Regular Windows has "feature" updates every 6 months, which do what you described.
- bhj 6y ago
  Not to mention the performance difference between Pro and LTSC is night and day on an HDD. All that extra overhead is much less noticeable with an SSD, sure, but it's still there.

Ahmd72 6y ago

I was brought up in a Windows environment, from home to school to friends, it was pretty much everywhere. Now that we are so used to it do we realize how horrible Windows OS is, to give an example my Windows 10 continuously asks me to update and then when I try it fails. So I stopped doing it and then they came up with feature updates, the worst it automatically downloads itself even when I have blocked Windows Update service and then asks me to restart my computer to install it. If I leave my computer plugged in and locked which is part of any normal person's workflow, it will automatically restart and then try updating which it fails. No dialog box shows up telling the update failed, no reason why the update failed just that it failed. The cycle then continues again, I wish I could sue them so bad that they will start caring about this kind of stuff.

Narishma 6y ago
I have a similar issue on one of my laptops. Windows Update always fails to install those big updates. I think it's because it reboots into some sort of safe mode where power management isn't active, so the laptop quickly overheats and shuts down. My work around is to set the connection to metered so it doesn't automatically download those big updates. It's been working so far.
- Ahmd72 6y ago
  Doesn't work for me, are you talking about security or feature updates?
  - Narishma 6y ago
    Feature updates.

sjg007 6y ago

I still can't print with windows 10. Tried everything. Canon MF2470 networked or USB.