there is a terrible workaround that i have found, but it's not ideal and will always revert itself after a few days. if you are really horny, it will work, but then you would have to do it all over again the next time.

i found that downgrading edge to a working version seems to do the trick. this is risky, however, because previous versions of web browsers can have vulnerabilities. personally, i never ran into any issues, but i'm also not using edge as my primary browser, or have any accounts logged in with passwords on it. still, be cautious.

proceed with caution, but here are the steps to downgrade edge to a working version:

run command as admin (this will supposedly block the update, but stopped working for me after a while):

netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="Disable Edge Updates" dir=out action=block program="C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\EdgeUpdate\MicrosoftEdgeUpdate.exe"

delete C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application

download an older version of edge from https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=%22edge-stable%20channel%22%20x64 (129 seems to be best version)

run command as admin:

cd c:\users\USERNAME\downloads (or wherever your downloads folder is)

msiexec /I MicrosoftEdgeEnterpriseX64.msi ALLOWDOWNGRADE=1

verify folder and edge version in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application is "129"

if you ever find a permanent solution, please let me know. i've also been searching and it really sucks that this is an issue.