Gettting rid of Edge (and other unwanted defaults)

I want defaults: browser - Firefox, PDF - Adobe. Both open with Edge by default.

Set the default apps - Win 10 reverted to Edge a week later. Repeated several times with the same result. Same "forceful" return to MS defaults for videos (I have VLC), pictures (I have Office 10 Picture Manager bootstrapped to Office 13), and few other things that Win 10 have apps for.

I killed the Edge - stopped it from running as described here: How to remove Microsoft Edge on a Windows computer. A week or two everything was fine, and now MS displays a warning "File not found" (or Can't open the file - don't remember). It does this for offline HTML files, online and offline PDF.

Repeat "Open with -> Another App -> Firefox (or Adobe, VLC, etc) - good for another few weeks, then MS defaults are back again, probably after some upgrades. This is so annoying, lame, improper.

Spunk - I have set the defaults that I wanted. Many times. It reverts to Win 10 defaults again.

No unusual cleaners/backups. Bitdefender for 24 hrs protection (more efficient than Win10 Defender). I doubt it does this.

My alternate selection for pictures is actually MS product - Office 10 Picture Manager, they removed it from Office 13 for some reason but there is MS add-on to re-install it. And it still reverts to Win 10 imaging app - though not as often as it does for browser, videos and PDF where my defaults are 3-rd party.

almot09 said:

Set the default apps - Win 10 reverted to Edge a week later... Same "forceful" return to MS defaults for videos (I have VLC), pictures (I have Office 10 Picture Manager bootstrapped to Office 13), and few other things that Win 10 have apps for.

Are you seeing notifications that 'an app default was reset'? This is usually caused by older apps that use deprecated methods of setting or checking their defaults. Older versions of Infranview have been known to cause this, for example. See my answer in a previous thread on the subject...

Bree said:

The solution is to work out which app is using deprecated methods and triggers the reset, then look for the latest update which should be compatible with Windows 10. In your case it is almost certainly Infranview. .... The others that get reset (like your Adobe, and ... Firefox) are just collateral damage when Infranview triggered the reset.

How to force Win 10 to stick to the apps I choose for whatever file ty

Don't remember seeing notifications that default app was reset. I'm trying to read all the notifications when they pop up :)... Will keep an eye on it.
I don't have Irfanview, and very few apps are older than 2015. Will check it, thanks.
Pics are handled by Office 2010 - because they removed Picture Manager from Office 2013. Well, Office is their product...

almot09 said:

Don't remember seeing notifications that default app was reset. I'm trying to read all the notifications when they pop up :)... Will keep an eye on it...

If it is this problem that's resetting your defaults, it's not straight forward to identify the culprit. Just opening the 'problem' app may not trigger the reset. One thing that often seems to trigger an 'app default reset' is using 'File Open...' in the incompatible app. It would seem that to open files some apps first check to see what file types they are set as 'default' for - something to keep the other eye on :)

Opening a file (in incompatible app) is a conscious action, I would've noticed. Besides, why would I intentionally open a file not by usual left-click, but through the right-click menu "open with", and choose an app that I don't normally use?

2 things I suspect are triggering it:
1) Opening attached picture files in MS Outlook - this is when file would suddenly open in a different viewer, not Adobe or MS Office 10. Sometimes not even "attached" - people send files from smartphones and it arrives kind of "embedded" into the message body, but it is a picture that can be copy-pasted.
2) Occasional use of my old scanner HP Scanjet G3010 with driver of 2006. Once I even had to install Irfanview when original driver stopped working, but then MS or HP have fixed something, and it works under Win 10. Well, driver is not really an "app", this is where my knowledge ends.

almot09 said:

2 things I suspect are triggering it:
1) Opening attached picture files in MS Outlook - this is when file would suddenly open in a different viewer...

You may be confusing cause and effect there. I suspect the defaults may have been reset quite some time earlier, that would just have been the first time you saw the effect.

Once I even had to install Irfanview...

Ah-ha! I did tell you that older versions of Infranview (OK, I may have problems spelling it :)) were known to cause this problem, it's not still installed is it? If so, it's also known that this fault was fixed for recent versions. Update or uninstall if it's still lurking on your system.

I don't use it myself, but this user does, and updating their version cured all their defaults resetting...
Setting up Windows 10 Pro