Solved Unable to recently select Google Search engine in IE11

I just recently rebuilt my Win 8.1 Pro system, and ran into a little issue. In IE 11 desktop, when I go to manage add-ons and try to add the Google search engine to my list of search providers (I have no problem finding it in the list of options), when I click on the "Add to Internet Explorer" button, nothing happens. I would normally get a confirmation window saying do you want to add Google search and make it your default, but no window appears. I have totally reset IE, and uninstalled/reinstalled IE, but the issue persists. I was wondering if anyone else has run into this problem recently, and if anyone has managed to come up with a solution to allow Google search be added as my default search engine so I can remove Bing. Thanks in advance.

Yeah, you're right, the other Google ones such as maps, translate, etc. work OK, just not the Google Search one. Not sure why that is, [DEL]but you can manually install one for Google yourself instead.

1) Go to EnhanceIE.com - IE, Chrome, Firefox Search Provider builder

2) Use https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=TEST or https://www.google.com/search?q=TEST depending on country.

3) Click 'Install'. It will come up with the confirmation window you're used to seeing.[/DEL]

EDIT: It seems you can no longer add them manually either, so I don't know. I hope there's a legitimate reason for this and it isn't for nefarious reasons. It seems the ones listed as 'Search Provider' won't install, but the ones listed as 'Accelerator' will.

After a lot of research, I discovered the issue. Windows update KB3038314 is the culprit. After uninstalling the update, had no problem setting Google as my default search provider. Hopefully Microsoft will discover this as well and fix the update.

Thank you, had the same issue on two PC's, uninstalling KB3038314 has fixed it on this PC. Will do the same on my laptop latter. That was driving me bonkers trying to sort out what was going on. At first I thought it was just my laptop, but had the same issue on my desktop this morning. Was going to start a thread on it and saw yours. :thumb:

My work around is to just set Google search as my home page in IE 11 with Windows 8.1. This works fine for my needs.

That's what I did on my laptop. On top of that I usually switch Bing for Google in manage add-ons. It was a fresh install and I had wondered if it was fubar for some reason. That and the constant nag to set IE as the default web browser, even though I did it the first time it prompted me too. All sorted now though. I'll just uninstall that patch, set Google and redo the patch.