How to remove Windows Backup 'app'?

This won't change anything for 95% of this forum's audience.
- Less than half of you use Windows Home edition, and this upcoming setting won't apply.
- The other half aren't members of any AAD or AD domain, and this setting won't apply.

This fix is for managed organizations which already have cloud storage and backup solutions in place. There is financial incentive for MS pushing Windows Backup. If you back up your system, your OneDrive usage increases and possibly forces you to purchase a subscription for additional storage. This is intended as an annual cash grab.

They are effectively (and clumsily) trying to compete against Carbonite and BackBlaze, who already provide cloud-based backups.

happy to report that downloading & installing the recent KB5031356 cumulative update does not bring back the Windows Backup app after running powershell command Remove-WindowsPackage -Online -PackageName "Microsoft-Windows-UserExperience-Desktop-Package" (ah yes!)

I noticed this too. It's strange that the icon has reappeared in the start menu apps (I haven't opened it)
but Windows Backup does not show up in Task Manager/App History and the User Experience package has not reinstalled.

That's fair. MS is just as bad as google when it comes to "it's a sytem app and therefore can't be removed".
Coy, disingenuous, straight out lies.

In this case, I really don't get it. Are they trying to persuade users to migrate from a local to a M$ account?
I'm too old and cynical for this nonsense

davexnet said:

That's fair. MS is just as bad as google when it comes to "it's a sytem app and therefore can't be removed".
Coy, disingenuous, straight out lies.

In this case, I really don't get it. Are they trying to persuade users to migrate from a local to a M$ account?
I'm too old and cynical for this nonsense

They weren't like this until Windows 8, then they saw Google not allowing the admin rights on the devices by default and to be able to get it, user has to do complete tech savvy marathon. And they thought, woah! Google got away with murder, wouldn't hurt if just drive recklessly too and they started following in the Google's footstep.

In my opinion, they very well adopt the subscription based model for Windows 12 hence the drive to make users login with an online Microsoft account. Google showed others how to snatch the privileges of users by continuously screaming "muh...security".

Quexos said:

Did not read entire thread, but here is what worked for me.
1. Run command in Powershell to find the version of "Windows-UserExperience-Desktop-Package" installed
2. Remove it > Reboot
3. Probably every time there is a new version of "Windows Feature Experience Pack", it will return and you'll have to repeat the process. I'm sure eventually M$ will add some new spywa...important data min... feature they don't want us nuking (for "muh securitays" and to "save da children") and disable all this...but in the meantime.

Warning: this nukes the entire "Windows Feature Experience Pack", so if that has anything you want, don't do it! So far, I have noticed zero ill effects...but I don't use any of Windows' "fluff". Will edit if I find issue...

PowerShell as admin:

Code:

dism /online /get-packages

found on mine:

Code:

Package Identity : Microsoft-Windows-UserExperience-Desktop-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.19041.3636
State : Installed
Release Type : OnDemand Pack
Install Time : 11/17/2023 7:37 AM

adjust to correct version and run:

Code:

Remove-WindowsPackage -Online -PackageName "Microsoft-Windows-UserExperience-Desktop-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.19041.3636"

Before


After

Lovely! Here is your code in one line without the hassle of doing all the searching after the package etc etc manually.

Code:

dism /online /get-packages | Select-String "UserExperience" | ForEach-Object { $_ -match 'Package Identity : (.+)$' | Out-Null; $matches[1] } | ForEach-Object { Remove-WindowsPackage -Online -PackageName $_ }