Edge UpdatePolicy - Disable automatic updates leads to "Microsoft Edge is out of Date"

We are using Edge on a special-purpose disconnected Environment (Network without any Internet Connectivity). EdgeUpdate Policies are configured as follows to turn off automatic updates (which cannot be done "online" in this environment). We are deploying Edge and Edge Updates using MSI-Packages with our own Depoyment-Mechanisms, but we have no need to roll out every single new Edge-Version, we update Edge after testing the compatibility for this special purpose about every 3 months).

But what happens after some time is, that Edge annoys the Users to Update because "Microsoft Edge is out of Date". This pops up every Edge start. This seems to be a bug, because if Updates are disabled by policy the user of course should not be annoyed - IT is taking care of the updates!

Kindly asking Kelly_Y for support to forward this to the right team.

Gunnar-Haslinger
Aug 30, 2021
Hey Kelly_Y,
As there were some new customer-Tickets opened the last days I did some more debugging and compared "old" machines which seem to work fine with newer ones which have this issue.

MicrosoftEdgeUpdate.log doesn't give any hints. Log of machines having this issue look exactly the same like machines which are fine.

I compared the Registry Key/Values of EdgeUpdate in depth and found the solution as follows:

This setting works fine:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\EdgeUpdate\ClientState\{56EB18F8-B008-4CBD-B6D2-8C97FE7E9062}] "brand"="GCEU"

But on the newer machines having this issue the value "brand" is configured "GGLS" instead of "GCEU". I tried it both ways:
I configured a good machine to "brand"="GGLS" => Restart Edge => Brings warnings. => configured back to "brand"="GCEU" => Restart Edge => No Warning, OK.
I configured a "bad" machine which has this issue from "brand"="GGLS" to "brand"="GCEU" => OK, after restarting Edge the warning doesn't pop up again, Problem solved.
According to docs.microsoft.com - Windows diagnostic events and fields this value seems to have following semantic: appBrandCode The 4-digit brand code under which the the product was installed, if any. Possible values: 'GGLS' (default), 'GCEU' (enterprise install), and '' (unknown).

Both Machines are Windows 10 Enterprise v1909, same hotfixes applied. I have no Idea why "brand" is configured "GGLS" in the newer installed ones. But I have the idea that this is because of EdgeHTML was replaced by EdgeChromium out of the box on the newer Installation-ISO-media which is used for our unattended deployment. Seems the included EdgeChromium in the new ISO-Image has this preconfigured in a wrong way?

Kelly_Y
Microsoft
Aug 20, 2021
Gunnar-Haslinger Happy Friday! Yes, I've reached out to the team about the message. We'll let you know any updates or if there are any follow up questions. 🙂 Thank you!

-Kelly
- Kelly_Y
  Microsoft
  Aug 23, 2021
  Gunnar-Haslinger Hi! Couple of things we wanted to confirm and just double check.
  
  Is the AutoUpdateCheckPeriodMinutes policy set to 0 so all auto-update checks are disabled? (Basically since you folks are controlling the updates)
  
  Did this issue with the "Microsoft Edge is out of Date" message always happen or was this something users started noticing recently? If recently, can you estimate around a specific version number?
  
  Thank you!
  
  -Kelly
  - Gunnar-Haslinger
    Steel Contributor
    Aug 23, 2021
    Hi Kelly_Y,
    thanks for your questions, answers as follows:
    
    Yes, as you see in my Edge Updates Policies Screenshot in my initial post AutoUpdateCheckPeriodMinutes ist set to 0. These devices had no chance to reach Microsoft-Servers/Internet, never - not a single second in their lifetime. I have no idea why they are complaining about "Microsoft Edge is out of Date" ... this seems to be kind of "timebomb", because they cannot grab this information from an update-server.
    
    We didn't see this behavior until we updated to v90 in June. Next update of this machines will be v93 in September ... the machines started complaining to be out of date in late July 2021 / beginning of August 2021. Not all of them show this behavior - my best guess is, that only machines which where new installed during June/July with Edge v90 as initial Edge Version show this behavior. Those installed several month before which had Edge v87 installed and were updated to v90 in June seem to behave correct and don't show this messages. But this is just a guess - I cannot verify this because not all Users open a ticket, some just keep clicking without notifying us. But those who complained about definitely had fresh installed machines where Edge v90 was the first Edge-Version which was installed.

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Edge UpdatePolicy - Disable automatic updates leads to "Microsoft Edge is out of Date"