Problems with Edge 114.0.1823.41, update to .43 available

[German]Microsoft's Edge update to version 114.0.1823.41 from June 6, 2023, seem to have caused some issues for some users. I've received reports of crashes – and another administrator complains about "useless stuff" that was displayed in Edge in his corporate environment. Here's a quick rundown. Meanwhile, version 114.0.1823.43 of Edge is distributed.

I reported about the update in the German blog post Edge 114.0.1823.41. It is a security update that, according to the release notes, closes the vulnerability CVE-2023-3079. recemtöy fixed from the Chromium project. This vulnerability is being exploited in the wild, according to Google.

Meanwhile, blog readers have reported that version 114.0.1823.43 of the browser is being rolled out – release notes I haven't found yet. It is supposed to be a bug fix update.

Browser crashes under Windows Server 2016

German blog reader Stefan A. left this comment and reports Edge crashes on Windows Server 2016, though it probably doesn't hit every machine. Stefan writes:

After updating to Edge 114.0.1823.41 yesterday I noticed the following behavior on 2 different Windows Server 2016:

I wanted to check the version after the update and found that when opening Info or Settings, the browser crashes and closes.

It doesn't seem to affect every server though, because on a third server 2016 it still works after updating to Edge 114.0.1823.41.

What I could find is that it is user dependent. If you log in to the same server with a different user, the problem does not occur.

I have once for testing the folder:
"C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\" was deleted.
After that, calling the settings and info was possible again.

But I don't have a real solution yet.

I think this is possibly a bug in the version.

Could be an isolated case, but German reader Robert Glöckner confirms this in this comment: "can I confirm on one of three 2016s I look after. the one is the WTS. But today at night, the .43 was already reloaded…". Stefan A. pointed to this reddit.com thread where the bug is also described.

Edge v114.0.1823.41 Crashes on About or Settings pages – Error 0xc0000005

I am currently testing the update to Edge v114.0.1823.41 and I am seeing a crash on some workstations with edge.exe error 0xc0000005 in the Event Log. These are Win 10 v22H2 machines. This happens even when all security agents are removed/disabled and all extensions are removed. In analyzing the DMP file it looks like there is an issue with the Workspaces feature that is causing or contributing to the bug. The DMP contains:

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID:  NULL_CLASS_PTR_READ_c0000005_msedge.dll!edge::workspaces::EdgeWorkspaceManager::ShouldEnableDeleteWorkspacePrefFileButton

After seeing that, I disabled Workspaces feature via registry and the issue went away. I do not know yet why this is only happening on some Win 10 v22H2 systems and not others. ProcMon capture turned up nothing useful that I can see. Anyone else seeing this issue?

Edit: As a temporary workaround I've found that disabling the Workspaces feature via Edge GPO solves this issue. To gain access to that setting you will need the v114 Edge policy templates.

The solution described there is to disable the WorkSpace features via registry or GPO. I can't say yet if the new Edge version will fix the bug.

Complaint about Edge feature

On Facebook, an administrator pointed out another Edge v114.0.1823.41 nuisance to me in a private message and wrote:

Hi Günter, brief info from my side about your blog post "Edge 114.0.1823.41".

After updating to the latest version of Edge, MS "graces" users with a new icon next to the URL line. It's called "Basic Browser Information".

When you click on it, various information is displayed, but I don't think anyone is really interested in it.

In unmanaged environments, "this new useless stuff" can be easily turned off via "Hide". However, I have not yet found a way to disable this in managed environments via GPO. MS has provided the ADMX templates at the same time as the current Edge, but their installation currently fails for me.

Normally the EXE is unpacked into a ZIP, with which I could add the ADMX files to the central storage of the GPOs on my (private) server 2022. The EXE currently seems to have a bug.

The reader thinks that I can put this in my post, because he is certainly not the only one who will be confronted with it in the next few days. As the administrator writes: "MS doesn't seem to care at all about what users really want. I'm experiencing this every day with the Azure Cloud! I have to deal with it intensively for one of our customers at work. And I get more and more the impression that the developers at MS are no longer really "master" of their own software! Reminds me a bit of the classic movie "Groundhog Day" with Bill Murray."