Can't unpin Microsoft Edge from taskbar

Brink said:

Hello Matthew, and welcome to Ten Forums. :)

You could do so by unpinning Microsoft Edge from the taskbar and Start menu, and setting whatever web browser you wanted to use instead as the default program instead.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/5...dows-10-a.html

I have already chosen chrome to be my default browser and when I double click on an html file, it opens in chrome as I expect. However I still can't unpin Microsoft Edge from the taskbar as you suggest. When I right click on the edge icon in the taskbar this is what I see:



This is seriously messed up, since it is giving me a choice to pin Microsoft Edge to the taskbar. Why would it give me such a choice when it is already pinned to the taskbar @#$&!!

(By the way, the four icons to the left of my system tray were added by using the quicklaunch toolbar mechanism, but this does not seem related to the problem.)

What's more when I right click on every other icon in the taskbar, the menu presented includes an option to "unpin" the application from the taskbar. It almost seems that Microsoft is going out of its way to tell me what I want. Yet I haven't seen others complaining of this problem, so perhaps there is a problem with my windows 10 setup? I thought I may have an extra icon somewhere that I could delete, so I checked here:

C:\Users\paul\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar

But I only see shortcuts to the seven applications that I have manually pinned to the taskbar myself.
Then I noticed this folder which surely must contain the errant link:

C:\Users\paul\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\ImplicitAppShortcuts

But no, indeed this folder is blank. (I have it set to show hidden files, so I'm sure about that).

I also checked the Registry
REG:\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Taskband\

but I only see the keys (Default), Favorites, FavoritesChanges, FavoritesRemovedChanges, FavoritesResolve, and FavoritesVersion none of which seems to be related to my problem.

Can anyone give me a suggestion on how to remove this unwanted and amazingly persistent icon?

~Paul

Brink said:

Hello Paul, and welcome to Ten Forums. :)

Using the tutorial below to reset and clear taskbar pinned apps should do the trick, but you'll have to manually "Pin to taskbar" all the app you want back again afterwards.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/3...dows-10-a.html

That batch file did the trick. Thanks a lot for your quick reply!

BTW it is amazing the hours we waste on simple things like this that one would expect simply to work.
Also as you suggested I needed to manually pin my applications to the taskbar again. At first I just tried copying the links I had saved from the AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar folder back into that folder, but even after rebooting windows did not recognize that they were there.

pmennen said:

That batch file did the trick. Thanks a lot for your quick reply!

BTW it is amazing the hours we waste on simple things like this that one would expect simply to work.
Also as you suggested I needed to manually pin my applications to the taskbar again. At first I just tried copying the links I had saved from the AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar folder back into that folder, but even after rebooting windows did not recognize that they were there.

Another suggestion for anybody wanting to do this. For the apps that you want to re-pin to the task bar, open them before running the batch file. It'll make it a little easier to re-pin them because they will continue to run even though windows explorer restarts. The file explorer however might not stay running because i believe it requires windows explorer to be running(not too clear on the specifics there). I guess i can't guarantee this will work but it worked for me anyway.

Good Luck, I hope this helps.