Why can I not change my default .pdf app to anything other than Microsoft Edge?

Anonymous
2024-04-29T11:48:46+00:00

I follow the steps (via Settings) and no change. I try to open Adobe Reader and it will not open on my PC. I see from a search that this is not a new issue and it's frustrating. This feels predatory and proprietary - forcing us to use Microsoft products. I'm thinking of stopping my personal subscription and moving to another option.

Microsoft Edge | Read PDFs | Windows 11

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-05-03T16:40:06+00:00

    This worked for me! Thank you!

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-05-03T03:27:58+00:00

    Stopping MS Edge in Task Manager seemed to work (i.e. allow me to set Okular as default PDF viewer), but given everything else I'd read I had no confidence it would stay that way.

    Therefore in addition I have:

    * gone to Startup Apps in Task Manager and disabled msedge.exe

    * re-read https://kolbi.cz/blog/2024/04/03/userchoice-protection-driver-ucpd-sys/ which demonstrates that the problem is (at least for now) caused by the new driver UCPD.sys, and followed its suggestion to:

    1 Open an elevated PowerShell command prompt

    2 Disable the driver by executing the command New-ItemProperty -Path “HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UCPD” -Name “Start” -Value 4 -PropertyType DWORD -Force

    3 Disable the scheduled task that will otherwise eventually re-start the driver and maybe change back some of your settings by executing the command Disable-ScheduledTask -TaskName ‘\Microsoft\Windows\AppxDeploymentClient\UCPD velocity’

    * crossed my fingers and turned round three times.

    So far so good, after several reboots and even browsing some web pages with Edge.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-05-02T20:46:29+00:00

    I did what Paolo suggested and it didn't work, BUT after I followed his steps I was able to at least set the default program to Google Chrome THEN it let me switch to Adobe and it worked. I just couldn't go straight from Microsoft Edge to Adobe. Highly predatory practices of Microsoft strikes again!

    Took me a couple times, but finally got there. Thanks for this!

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-05-02T18:39:56+00:00

    This is the way

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-05-01T20:22:07+00:00

    Just recently, (apparently) MS has added a restriction to changing certain File Type Associations.

    This guy has a pretty good post about it/

    UserChoice Protection Driver – UCPD.sys – the kolbicz blog

    And I agree, this is not good business practice.

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