When Microsoft built many of its system management tools between 2009 and 2015, they didn't build a custom rendering engine. Instead, they used the —a wrapper around the installed version of Internet Explorer.
The answer is legal and logistical. Microsoft cannot redistribute Google Chrome's DLLs inside their OS kernel tools due to licensing. Furthermore, the Windows API ( IWebBrowser2 ) is a COM interface that is guaranteed to exist on every Windows machine (until recently). For a systems tool, using the OS intrinsic component is the safest bet for "it just works." uv requires internet explorer version 8 9 10 or 11 to run
Unfortunately, "safe" in 2015 became "dangerous" in 2024. The error "uv requires Internet Explorer version 8, 9, 10 or 11 to run" is not a bug; it is a fossil. It is a reminder that Windows is a layered cake of decades of backwards compatibility. When Microsoft built many of its system management