How to avoid update announcements to launch Internet Explorer?

Sometimes applications may show a popup telling there is an update adding a link to download or to release notes.
It may happen that Internet Explorer is being launched, rather than my default (3rd party) browser.

I would expect Edge to be launched then, instead of IE.

Anyway, my clicking on the Internet Explorer's [X] close button, right hand top corner, initiated a Windows shut down. Entire shut down I mean, not a restart.
There were just 2 (maybe 3) applications running, stable ones that I have been using for years.

Maybe this is a one-off case, I don't know, but I want to avoid this from happening again.

Is there a way to 'set' Windows to avoid launching IE and use either my default browser (Chrome) or built in Edge?


Thanks!

p.s. peculiar thing: the event logs do not show shut down and/or restart events, or any other 'Error'-events that may relate to an 'unexpectedly' shut down or whatever. As far as I can see in the event logs nothing special happened.

Hello dalchina,

Many thanks for all the below.

As for default apps: Chrome has been set as default browser there. Maybe indeed the application is using a hardcoded link.
It is not an old program, it is constantly being updated.
Have asked the developer to consider changing the -possibly- hardcoded link to use system default browser, if possible.


As for checking eventlogs - I use Event Log Explorer from eventlogxp.com. It is nice tool.

1. As for HDDs, I think it is not a hardware matter. Just recently I checked using CrystalDiskInfo and all looked fine.
I hesitate to install an application that I will hardly use anymore, like Hard Disk Sentinal. It will surely serve its purposes,
but for me, well, I don't know.

2. as for Chkdsk - please find the log at the bottom

3. as for SFC /Scannow:
it reported: "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations."


Oh - I am using Windows 10 x64 17134.286, i.e. latest stable built.

==chkdsk log==

Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is Windows.

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.

Stage 1: Examining basic file system structure ...
414976 file records processed.
File verification completed.
12488 large file records processed.
0 bad file records processed.

Stage 2: Examining file name linkage ...
211 reparse records processed.
496272 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files scanned.
0 unindexed files recovered to lost and found.
211 reparse records processed.

Stage 3: Examining security descriptors ...
Cleaning up 2137 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 2137 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 2137 unused security descriptors.
Security descriptor verification completed.
40649 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
35548200 USN bytes processed.
Usn Journal verification completed.

Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems.
No further action is required.

449464319 KB total disk space.
83879852 KB in 182883 files.
136076 KB in 40650 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
536143 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
364912248 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
112366079 total allocation units on disk.
91228062 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
00 55 06 00 37 69 03 00 79 b0 06 00 00 00 00 00 .U..7i..y.......
a4 00 00 00 2f 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ..../...........

Windows has finished checking your disk.
Please wait while your computer restarts.

=

Also if Internet Explorer has not been hard-coded by your programs and if you don't use/need Internet Explorer have you as an experiment, tried disabling it in "features", to see which browser gets launched ?

Install or Uninstall Internet Explorer in Windows 10 | Windows 10 Tutorials