Question Win11 24H2 - Edge running in the background constantly?

[mikeymikec]

I'm playing around with 24H2 and noticed that Edge (msedge.exe) seems to always be running in the background and quite often is saturating a CPU core, despite the fact that I have Edge set not to start with Windows and set not to run in the background. I'm wondering if the only course to get it to shut up is to uninstall it (for what that's worth, MS will probably just auto-reinstall it).

 

[C1]

Not sure it is removable anymore (particularly in the latest & greatest Windows version). Seems to be a mixed bag about this on the networks.

For example, from Google search:

Unfortunately, it is not possible to uninstall MS Edge. For more details on why Microsoft has no longer made it possible to uninstall MS Edge, see the article below. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-e... You can delete MS Edge shortcuts from your desktop and use your favorite browser as default.Feb 2, 2024

A guess is that Edge is purposely being used in the background as monitoring/communications agent between your OS install and MS corp. and that this is now intended to be non-negotiable.

Good luck

 

[myindjon]

You can kill Edge process from task manager. Seems Microsoft is making their products less managable from userside with each updates.

 

[Tech Junky]

Group policy disable it or boot from live USB and rip it out. Can't believe people actually use it other than to install their preferred browser anyway. As to the CPU usage it's probably related to the ads in the start menu.

 

[tcsenter]

You're not going to get rid of it completely. Best you can do is to go through all the 'features' in Edge settings and disable everything that increases the number of Edge processes that run in the background or in memeory. e.g. Startup Boost is a major one

WinAero Tweaker has a Microsoft Edge section -> "Disable annoyances and bloat" offering a number of options/tweaks that you can select.

 

[WelshBloke]

I have edge totally uninstalled.

I tried a few things and I'm not sure which one worked tbh. I did a changing my location to an EU country using the Vivetool thing and I also have Revo uninstaller. One of those worked.

Edit. Nope location is back at UK, still dont have edge. Must be Revo.

 

[burninatortech4]

When is 24H2 getting mainstream release?

 

[mikeymikec]

When is 24H2 getting mainstream release?

It's already released. It just doesn't roll out via Windows Update automatically everywhere at once.

 

[3-5105]

I found a small tool on GitHub that can uninstall the Edge browser, but I'm not sure if it works. After uninstalling, you can switch to a different browser.

GitHub - ShadowWhisperer/Remove-MS-Edge: Uninstall Microsoft Edge silently, through an executable or batch script.

Uninstall Microsoft Edge silently, through an executable or batch script. - ShadowWhisperer/Remove-MS-Edge

github.com

If you need the Edge browser but don't want it to update automatically, you can download a third-party modified version of Edge that removes the update components after uninstalling the built-in Edge browser from the system.

By the way, I use the Windows LTSC version, which does not come with the Edge browser. AwA

Finally, my native language is Chinese, and this response was translated into English by ChatGPT.

 

[watdahel]

You can also try and go to Task Scheduler and delete or disable the Edge updating tasks in there.