[noworries]

TLDR;  running tfc.exe v3.1.9 on Win 10 pro v1607 apparently breaks parts of the Edge Browser.

 

If you run tfc.exe (v3.19.0) on Windows 10 pro (V1607, Build 14393.447) it will apparently prevent you from changing the default search engine in the Edge browser and may cause other problems with the Edge browser.   I attempted to document this issue in the GTG tfc.exe comments area but I ran out of space as apparently it's only for reviews.  The mods can remove my comments there as this is the complete post.

 

Here is how to duplicate the problem:

 

In your fully patched windows 10 pro v1607 system, create a new local user and login as that user. Open the Edge web browser and visit google.com.  In the Edge browser, click settings and then "view advanced settings", then scroll down to "change search engine, and select "Google Search (discovered)" and click on "set as default".  Google Search will now be your default search engine for the Edge Browser.  Go ahead and set the default back to Bing by selecting Bing and click on "set as default".

 

OK, so far so good.  Now download tfc.exe V3.19.0 (the newest version I believe) from GTG using Edge and save it to the desktop on the Win 10 pro system.  Run it and let it finish its cleanup process.  Once cleanup is complete, open the Edge browser and attempt to change the default search engine as I described in the previous paragraph.  It no longer works and fails with an error message "We couldn't set Google Search (discovered) as your default search engine, please try again later".

 

Additionally, if you now go back to GTG and attempt to download tfc.exe using the Edge browser, selecting "save as" and attempting to save the file, Edge only gives you the choice to save the file as a .txt file.

 

A third problem is that in Edge, settings, clear browsing data, clear will also fail after tfc.exe is run on the logged in user.  The error message is "Some data couldn't be cleared.  Please try again"

 

My brief additional testing shows that the damage only occurs to the logged in user profile where tfc.exe is run.  Other local user accounts on the Win 10 system appear to be unaffected by these two issues. I hope to perform some additional testing soon and will report my results in this thread.

 

So at this point I'd recommend not running tfc.exe on Windows 10 until a new version is released to correct these issues.  Also, it would be helpful to know how to repair the damage done to existing Windows 10 systems where tfc.exe has been used.

Edited by noworries, 26 November 2016 - 12:31 PM.