Reinstall Microsoft Edge on Windows OS

Microsoft Edge is the new built-in browser that comes pre-installed into the Windows OS update. We can easily reinstall the browser if anything goes wrong with the current installation. We need to uninstall the existing setup, delete the residue files, and then clean and install a fresh Microsoft Edge setup.

More often than not, the Legacy Edge was the second choice browser for many users. While it managed to checkmark most of the prerequisites from a browser’s point of view, it wasn’t fully polished.

That’s when the Silicon Valley giants decided to switch to the Chromium source code, and since then, there has been no looking back.

The new Edge browser tends to offer you all the features set of Chrome but, at the same time, isn’t resource hungry. However, despite these perks, it isn’t free from its fair share of issues.

Sometimes, it just refuses to load a page correctly, while in more extreme cases, the entire browser malfunctions or hangs unexpectedly at regular intervals.

There are quite a few fixes for these issues; one is that you need to reinstall the browser. Unfortunately, with Edge, that is easier said than done. This is because you cannot uninstall Edge from your PC normally.

Instead, you would have to take the help of a few commands and manually delete a few files. While all this might sound quite challenging, the instructions below will help you.

Uninstall Microsoft Edge

There is no direct option to uninstall the Microsoft Edge browser from Windows. However, we can use the command prompt and execute some of the codes for uninstallation.

Here are the steps to uninstall Microsoft Edge on Windows:

1. Launch File Explorer on your PC and head over to the below location:

   C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application

2. Within that, go to the folder named according to your browser’s version number.
   
3. Head over to its Installer folder, type in CMD in the address bar, and hit the Enter button.
   It shall launch the Command Prompt window.
   
4. Now execute the below command in this CMD window to uninstall Microsoft Edge from your Windows 10 PC:

   setup.exe –uninstall –system-level –verbose-logging –force-uninstall

   

That’s it; the above command will uninstall Edge from your PC.

Delete Edge User Data Files

Now that you have successfully removed Edge, it’s time to delete the associated user data files.

Here are the steps to delete the Edge user data files:

1. Open File Explorer and go to the following location (make sure to replace UserName accordingly):

   C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Packages

2. Inside this Packages folder, you should see a folder by the name of

   Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe

   

3. Please take a backup of this folder and then delete it from the mentioned location.

Reinstall Edge browser

The user data associated with the old browser build has now been deleted. So you now proceed to reinstall Microsoft Edge on your Windows PC.

Here are the steps to reinstall the browser:

1. Head over to the Start menu and launch PowerShell as an administrator.
2. Now copy-paste the below command in this PowerShell window and hit Enter:

   Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers -Name Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml" -Verbose}

   

Once the command has been successfully executed, the Edge browser will be installed onto your PC, and you shall get the Operation Completed message.

Bottom Line

These were the steps to reinstall Microsoft Edge on your Windows 10 PC. An app developer or publisher, in its true sense, should always give users some degree of freedom so that they mold their usage accordingly.

However, in this regard, Microsoft seems to have made the matter complicated by removing the Uninstall Option for its browser.

Since this process involves such complexities, few would prefer to bid farewell to this browser from their PC. And that would ultimately spell out success for Microsoft.

That is how things are now; one cannot expect any change in this scenario shortly.

What are your views on the same? Do let us know in the comments section below.

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