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Any way to get useless games out of Windows 10 Enterprise?
Why Microsoft included these with Windows 10 Enterprise is beyond me. 7 Enterprise didn't have the games enabled by default, but yet 10 Enterprise has Candy Crush, Minecraft and all of that garbage on every user's start menu by default
Thanks to the useful PowerShell commands to remove the built-in Metro apps, I created a batch script that I run as the built-in Administrator account on every PC before letting an employee log onto it. Not incredibly relevant by itself, but if you're curious the script is here:
You'll notice that I opted to keep some of the apps people might find marginally useful at work, like News and Money. Of course they can remove those too if they want, but since this is a business we obviously don't want them messing around on Xbox and Sports and what have you.Code:@echo off ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :: Automatically check & get admin rights ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: CLS :checkPrivileges NET FILE 1>NUL 2>NUL if '%errorlevel%' == '0' ( goto gotPrivileges ) else ( goto getPrivileges ) :getPrivileges if '%1'=='ELEV' (echo ELEV & shift /1 & goto gotPrivileges) echo This script needs admin rights to run. Doing so now. setlocal DisableDelayedExpansion set "batchPath=%~0" setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion ECHO Set UAC = CreateObject^("Shell.Application"^) > "%temp%\OEgetPrivileges.vbs" ECHO args = "ELEV " >> "%temp%\OEgetPrivileges.vbs" ECHO For Each strArg in WScript.Arguments >> "%temp%\OEgetPrivileges.vbs" ECHO args = args ^& strArg ^& " " >> "%temp%\OEgetPrivileges.vbs" ECHO Next >> "%temp%\OEgetPrivileges.vbs" ECHO UAC.ShellExecute "!batchPath!", args, "", "runas", 1 >> "%temp%\OEgetPrivileges.vbs" "%SystemRoot%\System32\WScript.exe" "%temp%\OEgetPrivileges.vbs" %* exit /B :gotPrivileges if '%1'=='ELEV' shift /1 setlocal & pushd . cd /d %~dp0 :::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::START :::::::::::::::::::::::::::: cls SET runpath=%~dp0 echo This is a script to remove some of the built-in Windows Metro-style apps from Windows 10. It comes with a bunch of echo useless garbage like "Get Office", "Get Skype" and so on, which just take up space and don't do anything. echo. echo Please wait for this window to close itself before doing anything. It might take a while. echo You will see various text on the screen. This is fine. The window will close when the process is done. powershell "Get-appxprovisionedpackage -online | where-object {$_.packagename -like """*officehub*"""} | remove-appxprovisionedpackage -online" powershell "Get-AppxPackage *officehub* | Remove-AppxPackage" powershell "Get-appxprovisionedpackage -online | where-object {$_.packagename -like """*skypeapp*"""} | remove-appxprovisionedpackage -online" powershell "Get-AppxPackage *skypeapp* | Remove-AppxPackage" powershell "Get-appxprovisionedpackage -online | where-object {$_.packagename -like """*getstarted*"""} | remove-appxprovisionedpackage -online" powershell "Get-AppxPackage *getstarted* | Remove-AppxPackage" powershell "Get-appxprovisionedpackage -online | where-object {$_.packagename -like """*zune*"""} | remove-appxprovisionedpackage -online" powershell "Get-AppxPackage *zune* | Remove-AppxPackage" powershell "Get-appxprovisionedpackage -online | where-object {$_.packagename -like """*solitairecollection*"""} | remove-appxprovisionedpackage -online" powershell "Get-AppxPackage *solitairecollection* | Remove-AppxPackage" powershell "Get-appxprovisionedpackage -online | where-object {$_.packagename -like """*onenote*"""} | remove-appxprovisionedpackage -online" powershell "Get-AppxPackage *onenote* | Remove-AppxPackage" powershell "Get-appxprovisionedpackage -online | where-object {$_.packagename -like """*3dbuilder*"""} | remove-appxprovisionedpackage -online" powershell "Get-AppxPackage *3dbuilder* | Remove-AppxPackage" powershell "Get-appxprovisionedpackage -online | where-object {$_.packagename -like """*xboxapp*"""} | remove-appxprovisionedpackage -online" powershell "Get-AppxPackage *xboxapp* | Remove-AppxPackage" powershell "Get-appxprovisionedpackage -online | where-object {$_.packagename -like """*people*"""} | remove-appxprovisionedpackage -online" powershell "Get-AppxPackage *people* | Remove-AppxPackage" powershell "Get-appxprovisionedpackage -online | where-object {$_.packagename -like """*bingsports*"""} | remove-appxprovisionedpackage -online" powershell "Get-AppxPackage *bingsports* | Remove-AppxPackage" powershell "Get-appxprovisionedpackage -online | where-object {$_.packagename -like """*candycrush*"""} | remove-appxprovisionedpackage -online" powershell "Get-AppxPackage *candycrush* | Remove-AppxPackage" powershell "Get-appxprovisionedpackage -online | where-object {$_.packagename -like """*twitter*"""} | remove-appxprovisionedpackage -online" powershell "Get-AppxPackage *twitter* | Remove-AppxPackage" powershell "Get-appxprovisionedpackage -online | where-object {$_.packagename -like """*sway*"""} | remove-appxprovisionedpackage -online" powershell "Get-AppxPackage *sway* | Remove-AppxPackage" powershell "Get-appxprovisionedpackage -online | where-object {$_.packagename -like """*commsphone"""} | remove-appxprovisionedpackage -online" powershell "Get-AppxPackage *commsphone* | Remove-AppxPackage" powershell "Get-appxprovisionedpackage -online | where-object {$_.packagename -like """*messaging*"""} | remove-appxprovisionedpackage -online" powershell "Get-AppxPackage *messaging* | Remove-AppxPackage" powershell "Get-appxprovisionedpackage -online | where-object {$_.packagename -like """*connectivitystore*"""} | remove-appxprovisionedpackage -online" powershell "Get-AppxPackage *connectivitystore* | Remove-AppxPackage"
So anyway, since I have the commands in there twice, it does remove the app for all accounts and not just the one running it. However, when a domain user logs in, their start menu looks like this (I tested this in a VMWare machine, having no extra software installed, not even VMWare Tools)
Notice how Candy Crush Soda, Minecraft, Twitter, some flipboard thing and... Photoshop(?) are still pinned to the start menu, while the ones I explicitly removed like Xbox and Sports are now empty space where the tiles would be.
From this test VM, it looks like none of those apps were "installed", they weren't in the list view on the left, but I would assume if you clicked on one it would automatically reinstall itself. On other machines, I've seen it auto-download Twitter and Candy Crush as soon as somebody signs on for the first time.
Is there any way, using PowerShell or similar, that I can just GET RID OF THESE APPS FOR GOOD?
Our users are logging in with domain accounts, not Microsoft accounts, there should be no reason it goes and fetches this crap other than the fact that Microsoft, for some reason, felt it was a good idea to bundle it into build 1511 of Windows 10. It's odd that the built-in ones disappear perfectly like I want, but not the third-party ones.
Edit: Somebody asked me once why we're using Windows 10 in a corporate environment and not LTSB (since that was made specifically for this sort of thing)
The answer is simple, some of the new apps are actually useful and we don't mind people using them. Edge is a whole lot faster than IE, and that's omitted from LTSB. Weather's nice to pin to your start menu. We have computers we use as slideshow machines and the Photos app does a decent job there too. Etc.
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