Saturday, April 27, 2019

It’s a very smart idea to backup and keep a copy of the data contents on a separate hard drive or offsite location but it’s also a smart idea to have multiple copies.

Today, I had to restore the Microsoft Edge browser on a computer workstation in the office. The operating system of Windows 10 for example comes with Internet Explorer and also Edge which is integrated into its operating system. If you are connected to the web you have a few different choices such as Chrome, Safari, Opera, Dolphin, Firefox and Brave Browser for instance. Have you ever thought what would happen if you lost access to one of your files or applications and it crashed or failed to work. This has happened on more than one occasion across some platforms and operating systems either through desktop, laptop, cellphones etc. And many people have gotten frustrated at data loss from either their cellphones breaking, or having problems. An example would be an Android update that renders your operating system partly unusable due to a bad update to a program. So it’s critical at all times that you have backups and offsite backups. Your memory also will occasionally fail you in terms of passwords and other things so just remember to keep records and CD backups etc.

Another example would be for instance what happened to the Edge browser a few days ago. After starting the browser it just lest a window with a big “e” symbol and a blue background but no access to the menus or anything else normally with the program. I checked around and first found a place I could back up my favorites even though I couldn’t start up the application and found a program called EdgeManage and EdgeExport that allowed me to backup my favorites and into a bookmark.html file as well as back up the database. Apparently Edge now backs up reference links to some thing akin to a registry setting deep in the system rather than a directory with files. Anyways, it took only 5 minutes. This software was available at a site by a programmer Emmet Gray.

Then I looked up how to reset, repair, reinstall Edge on a search engine.

They recommended to do this in SafeMode which you can access by doing Windows + R and then typing msconfig and clicking the Boot Menu and checking “Safe Mode” and Apply and Ok.

Then it told me to find Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe under
C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Package location within Windows Explorer. You could also hit the Windows + R button and type the
C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Package location and hit Enter to get to this location. And it said to delete this
Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe and its contents.

Then after you do this, you reboot. and go into a PowerShell prompt as Administrator and type in:

Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers -Name Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml" -Verbose}

This allows you to reinstall the Edge browser. And then you have to reboot. Once you reboot, you should be able to start the browser. It seemed to work. After that you could go back into EdgeManage and Restore Database under the Utilities menu.

I found this fortunately allowed my browser to be fresh again and with just my favorites and it was working again. So I was happy. Thank goodness for the internet and the ability to quickly solve problems like this. This doesn’t happen often, and many data losses are flukes or accidental mistakes, but for the few times that you have accidents, a backup and backup plan saves a lot of headaches and loss time and is an incredible thing to have and that’s why having the mindset of having multiples and backups is so important so you don’t have data point failures and loss productivity for long.