Unexpected Edge quick access seach bar on desktop on boot up?

Upon booting up and logging into my PC this morning, I was presented with Edge's quick access search bar slap bang in the middle of my desktop. I don't use Edge, and have never enabled it.

There were two options - 1. OK, got it or 2. Turn off search bar. I did not choose either.

Instead, I right clicked and chose to Close search bar.

Shut down PC, powered back up and it hasn't re-appeared.

Is this just an anomaly and nothing to be concerned about?



And whilst I'm here, if I cloned my live SSD and booted up the copy SSD on a different machine with different hardware - to run certain antivirus / malware programs (as I don't want to affect my live system), does it have the same effect in terms of finding viruses / malware? Also to run boot-time scans?

Yes, that's the one.

However, I don't use Edge and have never seen it presented before. And I've certainly not manually enabled it, hence I thought something dodgy was going on. I can understand if it was a recent thing and released with a recent update, but it seems it's nothing new. Bit startled by it this morning.

What about the cloning of disk and running scans on another machine; is that still effective in finding something (if there was anything)?