That’s exactly what Microsoft did in the 1990s after an antitrust lawsuit for hindering free browser selection: integrated Internet Explorer into Explorer to have an excuse for having it preinstalled.

The EU is taking similar steps but I tgink Edge WebView will stay essential. Removing it on a laptop broke biometrics (aka Windows Hello: fingerprint sensor and face recognition) and I had to use a restore point. Seems sketchy to use a browser engine for essential security features – at this point, I would hope I had triggered some OS tamper-detection because the alternative is an OS whose login system is infected with an unpopular browser not because it enhances security but out of spite, and I don’t think exploiting legal loopholes leads to most secure solutions.

Duh. To be honest, should have checked before making the post.
Are you WestEnd?

I once got Top 7 Luxury Cruise in (Landlocked) Czech Republic from Microsoft. Also, The Flight Price From %user.location% (village of 200 people) To New York Will Surprise You

Thanks. I should have checked earlier before making a fool of myself. A lesson for me, I guess.

deleted by creator

Thanks. Maybe I should go buy another emotional support Blåhaj, the big one this time.

Very wholesome thread for someone who could well be an IRL Joker and @[email protected].

Oh, and I love the community you moderate. Better fuel Huel!

Thank you for your kind words.

Hardship is part of life. I have more than I would like right now but that’s just how I am. Dunno, maybe should place myself preventively on suicide watch.

At least it’s a temporary, below minimum wage job so I don’t mind too much if the computer goes up in flames and I get fired. It will get wiped for the next wagie anyway.

MSER does not uninstall Edge BTW

Thanks, finally someome who understands (I don’t mind that you disagree, lots of people IRL do)

That’s what 1990s malware does. Modern malware either shows its own ads in your face (adware) or is stealthy while it mines crypto, exfiltrates your passwords / credit card info or encrypts all personal files.

You’re like WestEnd in this thread. Don’t take ot personally, I don’t blame you for the confusion, there is a lot of misleading media about malware behavior.

your web browser

That would be Firefox, and it works fine.

B, of course, I don’t want every install to take 4 hours.

For antivirus, the company provides ESET but I also use VirusTotal and a WIP common sense engine.

Joke’s on me, I already have (accidentally 😅) deleted essential Linux files before. Fun times. I knew I was to blame though, it was a learning experience.

Maybe I’ll try to figure out what exactly I did wrong so I learn more than just “don’t poke” (which I wouldn’t stop doing anyway).

Well, Task Manager nor attempting to delete the executable normally helped in my case. Power deleting Edge (including WebView) is obviously a bad idea but faster than finding whatever mistake I made that led to this behavior. I can afford to do dumb stuff because the job is temporary, and I never downloaded any malware (according to VirusTotal) that would cause further problems.

messed something up real bad

You see me power-deleting Edge (including WebView) in the video, which is obviously a bad idea. This is a somewhat experimental setup I have so I don’t mind screwing things up a little bit.

malware

Unlikely. I follow very strict precautions. I cannot afford to have malware on top of my existing computer trouble.

Hey! The stakes are low and the consequences are mild annoyance at worst (unless I’ve downloaded actual malware, which is unlikely because I follow precautions). Yes, I mess around with systems I shouldn’t but that’s just another learning experience.

That’s clearly misconfiguration, not malware. Do you think modern malware would do obvious shit like this? I checked all installers on VirusTotal and most were FOSS, too.

Anyway, I know removing Edge can do weird stuff, it disabled biometric login on another PC.

The computer is not high-stakes, I don’t do personal stuff there and this is mild annoyance at worst. I’ll have ESET check the drive and reset Edge-related config.

Nope, the tool is FOSS MSEdgeRedirect, very well known and praised. I think it’s purely my config mistake with no third-party wrongdoing and I will live with the consequence of Edge being slightly more annoying whenever I accidentally click it.

Infected by Microsoft.

Basically no modern malware will ever do this, lol. Every black hat just wants to make money by pushing ads, holding data ransom or stealing passwords, as stealthily as possible. Users are already suffficiently anmoyed by corpos, freeware software vendors and other users sharing the same network, the era of purely mildly annoying malware ended in the 2000s. There is no executable I haven’t checked with VirusTotal, and most are FOSS. Firefox once did something similar on me (infinite blank tabs) but it turned out I had misconfigured it to try to call itself to open PDFs.

I’ve had a similar thing happen before, Firefox kept opening several blank tabs every second. That time, the cause was a little more obvious: it kept calling itself to open a PDF because I had misconfigured it. I suspect a similar thing happened here – I did try to remove Edge, which may have broken something.

Rather than reinstall and reconfigure everything, which takes 4 hours I’ll just do an ESET virus scan and reset some relevant config. I don’t do personal stuff or banking on that computer anyway so I don’t think I’m really in danger.

Well, my default browser is Firefox and EdgeRemover (oops, misremembered the name) MSEdgeRedirect (which is FOSS of course, would not install such thing otherwise) does work, in a way – all Help pages, Start Menu searches etc. get redirected to Firefox and DuckDuckGo. I thought it would prevent Edge from opening at all. I don’t think it’s a browser hijacker.

Okay, the company is using ESET’s highest tier and the computers are remotely managed so I’m not sure I would see detection notifications.

textbook browser hijacker

Is your textbook from the 1990s? Pretty sure modern malware is way more stealthy and not at all obvious.

I don’t disagree with you. I could have still messed up in a subtle way but at least the consequences don’t seem to be too serious.

Anyway, I don’t think it’s (third party) malware (that is, not by me or Microsoft) for another reason: viruses and trojans are not what they used to be. Unlike the 1990s, you won’t find much modern malware that does nothing but annoys the user (corporations, other users and freeware vendors do it plenty). People do it fir profit and they make adware, ransomware and cryptostealers, not some script kiddie’s batch file in the Startup folder that opens all executables in System32 simultaneously.

When Firefox started opening several blank tabs every second, I immediately knew it wasn’t malware but a misconfiguration: turns out it was trying to open a PDF in itself. I think this is another little mistake I made.