SOLVED: Video: How To Hard Reset Microsoft Edge Browser In Windows 10 (or Remove Edge Completely)

If your Edge browser has be hijacked or has some other serious problem in Edge in Windows 10 we will show you how to remove and re-add Microsoft Edge which will perform a hard reset on it.  This is the only way to perform a full repair on Edge.

Edge is hard baked into Windows 10 and there is no interface like ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS AND FEATURES to click and remove or reinstall Edge.  Edge is a “modern app” which means every user has their own copy but you can use common tech tool called PowerShell that is built into Windows 10 to add or remove any Modern App and then reinstall it.

SIMPLE VERSION For Techs:

1. Create a new administrator on your Window 10 and sign in as that user
2. Delete (or rename) C:\Users\<PROBLEM USER>\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe
3. Sign back in as the PROBLEM USER
4. Open PowerShell as an admin and type (or paste)
   Add-AppxPackage -Path “C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe\Appxmanifest.xml” -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register

LONG VERSION For Regular Folks:

1. Create a new administrator on your Window 10 and sign in as that user (watch the video if you don’t know how to do this)
2. Launch FILE EXPLORER (the new name for MY COMPUTER) and double click on the VIEW tab
3. Put a check mark in FILE NAME EXTENSIONS and on HIDDEN ITEMS
4. Double click your way through to C:\Users\<EDGE PROBLEM USER>\AppData\Local\Packages\
5. Delete (or rename) Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe
6. Sign out of your temporary administrator account (in fact you can delete it now if you wish)
7. Sign back in as the user with the Edge problem
8. Click the START button and scroll down through the apps to the WINDOWS POWERSHELL folder
9. Click on the WINDOWS POWERSHELL folder
10. RIGHT CLICK (very important) on WINDOWS POWERSHELL and select RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR
11. Type in this command and press the ENTER key
    Add-AppxPackage -Path “C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe\Appxmanifest.xml” -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register
12. Test Microsoft Edge and it should work like it is brand new… because it is

If you want to just uninstall Microsoft Edge altogether, stop at step 7 above.

Having Cortana dead has been annoying me for quite a few builds of Windows 10 Anniversary Update 1607 and so I wrote up the same type of details on how to repair Cortana HERE.