Windows 10’s latest update is breaking Microsoft Edge, as well as the Start menu

Microsoft Edge
(Image credit: Microsoft)

The Windows 10 May 2019 Update continues to be plagued by problems, with the latest cumulative update (KB4517389) introducing a new batch of issues: Microsoft’s Edge browser now appears to be broken for some, and there are reports of installation failures.

This comes on top of the problems that the KB4517389 update caused with the Start menu, which failed to work due to a ‘critical error’ as we reported late last week (although that bug doesn’t affect many people, Microsoft claims).

The new issue with Edge has been reported online and via Microsoft’s Answers.com forum as follows: “After installing KB4517389 today can’t open Edge. Tried rebooting. Tried uninstalling update (then it worked). Reinstalled update and Edge won’t open. Tried reset and still won’t work. All other browsers work including Internet Explorer.”

One poster notes that this update “was delivered and Edge will not start among other symptoms,” adding that: “The Edge start menu icon is grayed out with a white line across the bottom of the tile. Edge Dev and other browsers work fine.”

Another Answers.com user observes: “Edge does not work anymore. It does not start anymore. Internet Explorer starts and runs. I’ve [uninstalled] update KB4517389 [and everything] works as before. Apart from VMware 14, which does not work anymore, too.”

Embarrassment of bugs

Despite this problem, and the aforementioned Start menu breaking bug, Microsoft’s official document for the KB4517389 update still states that there are no known issues. The firm has said elsewhere that it’s aware of problems though, at least in the case of the Start menu, and that this should be resolved later in October.

Windows Latest also noted that some users are saying that this latest cumulative update fails to install with some kind of generic error message – although perhaps these folks are the lucky ones, in some respects…

All of this, of course, comes in the recent wake of a seemingly constant round of Microsoft cumulative updates causing more problems than they solve, to the point where this really is becoming truly embarrassing. Indeed, we’ve argued that it’s doing reputational damage that could have long-lasting effects in terms of the company’s perceived overall reliability – or lack of it.

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).