Microsoft Edge keeps closing soon after opening. This is occurring after their most recent update was automatically installed around 2/10/2023. Why is this occurring?

The 'Fix' I was given today by Microsoft is, go to:-

C:\Users\User Name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data

Re-name the Folder 'Default' to 'Default_old'

Now re-start Edge

Worked perfectly for me !

After some trial and error I found the culprit folder to be:

C:\Users\User Name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default\Sync Data

Renaming this fixes the issue without having to delete the whole Edge folder.

(I didn't bother drilling down further to work out which specific file is the culprit. But might do that next time it comes up.)

(If the profile is set to roam Edge settings it will be the same path but replace "Local" with "Roaming".)

Edit: After further testing I've found in the following folder:

C:\Users\User Name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default\Sync Data\LevelDB

Are several "Microsoft Access Record-Locking Information" files. Deleting or renaming any one of these fixes the problem immediately.

Now I just need to find a way to automatically delete these files from every profile of every PC! So far there has always been one named 00005 so I might focus on trying to delete that with a batch file.

After a little more trial and error I've got a reasonably efficient fix for this. Running the following in Powershell (run as admin) fixes the issue for all users of a PC rather than just the current user.

Remove-Item "C:\Users\*\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default\Sync Data\LevelDB\000005.ldb" -Force

The next logical step would be to deploy this over group policy but we only have around 100 PCs and this takes seconds to apply to each PC so I don't think it's worth messing around with execution policies to get this to run automatically for me.

I just hope it's a permanent fix. If it reoccurs on a "fixed" PC I'll need to look into automating it.

Edit: After applying this to 30 PCs it has fixed it for the vast majority of users but I just had a call from another user with the issue persisting even with no ".ldb" files in the LevelDB folder. For this user renaming the LevelDB folder itself fixed it so it might make sense to delete the whole LEvelDB folder rather than just the 00005.ldb file. I just don't want to delete people's settings if I can avoid it.

I'm hoping someone from MS sees this since surely we've narrowed it down enough for them to come up with a fix!

Another update... the file that seems to always be present and also fixes the issue when deleted is "MANIFEST-000001". So the new powershell command would be:

Remove-Item "C:\Users\*\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default\Sync Data\LevelDB\MANIFEST-000001" -Force

Deleting this OR any .ldb file OR the 00003.log file seems to fix it but the MANIFEST-000001 file is the only one that's always there making this a more consistent fix.

Just had a similar issue occur when setting up a new laptop for a user. Using Event Viewer, I traced the issue down to what I believe is a sync error. Possibly related to SharePoint? Not certain.
The fix was actually quite simple in this case.

• Right click on Edge and launch an InPrivate session. (If InPrivate still crashes for you, unfortunately I don't have an answer there.)
• Click on the 3 dots in the top right corner of your browser and open Settings.
• Sign out of the user profile, and check the box to "Clear favorites, history, passwords, and other browsing data from this device."
• Sign back in to the user profile, and relaunch Edge normally.

Hopefully this will be useful to someone!