Edge Dev installing to incorrect directory

Deleted
Not applicable

Edge Dev on x64 bit hardware

Target: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge Dev\Application\msedge.exe"
Start in: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge Dev\Application"

Correct path should be

Target: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Edge Dev\Application\msedge.exe"
Start in: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Edge Dev\Application"

8 Replies
I'm pretty sure the Edge developers are aware of that and are doing that intentionally for their Internal purposes or some future plans we're not aware of. so that's not really incorrect, just unconventional, and honestly for a software that is in alpha (dev) and pre-alpha (canary) state i think it's normal.

@HotCakeX 

Microsoft is not following there own best practice in directory install path.

I'm sure they know that better than you and me lol. they probably considered the fact that there will be a time when 4 different channels of the Edge will be out, they can't all go to the same directory.

@HotCakeX 

They do not have to go to the same directory, just a more sensible one like:

Target: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Edge Dev\Application\msedge.exe" - Dev

Target: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Edge Canary\Application\msedge.exe" - Canary

Target: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Edge\Application\msedge.exe" - Beta/Retail

Google Chrome Canary goes to the Appdata for a reason, Microsoft decided to keep it that way and made their Canary chromium based one to go to that folder as well. i understand it is more sensible to You but to the actual Developers of the Edge/Google chrome/Chromium etc, AppData was more appropriate.

@HotCakeX 

Stable version is out, it still incorrectly installs in x86 folder.

Forgive me if I just think that nobody noticed and/or nobody cared from the beginning, that cannot be because "they did it on purpose cause they know better". It's just plain wrong.

@Paolo_DelRe I agree. This is not good. It is wrong and makes the installer developer look a fool. It is completely against Microsoft installer path conventions. 

 

Reg, Henno

This is very confusing, especially since I'm running on ARM.  The release channel does not support ARM (it doesn't mention it, it just runs as 32-bit and incredibly slow due to emulation).  I assumed it was running x86 code since it was installed to "C:\Program Files (x86)\". 

After some searching, I find out that the release channel does not yet support ARM.  So I hunt down the BETA channel and install it, only to see that it too installs to "Program Files (x86)".  After even more googling, I realize that since it's now running as 64-bit, that it's indeed running ARM64 (and is performing much better due to lack of emulation).  But how confusing to install that to "C:\Program Files (x86)\" instead of "C:\Program Files (Arm)\". 

To make matters more confusing, Windows Task Manager only shows you bitness in the platform column, so you only ever see "32-bit" and "64-bit", but have no idea if it's running native ARM code or x86 code via emulation.  I usually fall back to looking at the installation path, which Edge is violating.