Completely uninstall provisioned apps: how-to and detailed explanation

ddelo said:

Attachment 319443

Sorry for the necro Dimitri but I seem to be having trouble running your script on 21H2.
Here's the error I'm getting:
Method invocation failed because [System.Management.Automation.PSObject] does not contain a method named 'op_Addition'.
At C:\Users\test\Desktop\Uninstall-App.ps1:20 char:1
+ $SelectedApps = ($Apps_All + $Apps_Bundle) | sort Name | Out-GridView ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (op_Addition:String) [], RuntimeException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : MethodNotFound


No Apps selected for removal.
This is on a freshly installed VM.

Hey Paul!
The only adjustments I've done to the original script were to uncomment the 3 commented out portions and remove the -WhatIfs.

Have you tried running the script on the latest Windows 10 build?

I suspect this is something new that was introduced in the more recent builds, as I've just found out I can run this without issues on the 2019 LTSC release.

I was able to fix this by enforcing that Apps_All is an array by wrapping it in @():

Code:

$Apps_All  = @(Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | where SignatureKind -ne 'System' | select Name, PackageFullName, SignatureKind, Architecture)

It seems like Powershell wasn't reading it as an array (but as an automation object instead), so it was struggling to concatenate it with Apps_Bundle.

Wow feels like Christmas
I can confirm the script runs smoothly!

I really think this should somehow have more visibility.
Just removing preinstalled apps using PS is nothing new, but nowhere else do I see a discussion of bundle vs non-bundle or duplicate apps.
I also like your approach of making sure nothing vital gets removed.
This avoids so many potential stability and usability issues in the future.

Question regarding the 1st (and maybe 3rd?) entry in changelog:
I didn't even realize having multiple versions of an app was possible, but if so, what does the fix constitute?
Does it list all the versions instead of just listing the app once, so it's up to the user to select which (if not all) versions to remove?

Hello,
it has been long time since my last post.
First of all, I have to congrat with Dimitri for the impressive work. Well done, really!
I'm posting two updates on the topic.

1 - Goog news first. In the couple of years I've been using this procedure to remove dozens of apps from different systems. I performed the first tests on Windows 10.0.19041. Several feature updates later, I'm now on 10.0.19044 and none of the removed apps ever came back.

2 - And now bad (?) news. For the first time, yesterday I noticed something weird. Let me first say that I uninstall one app at the time and after every removal I verify that nothing is left behind. I always check:
- de-staging: Get-AppxPackage shall return nothing after Remove-AppxPackage is executed;
- de-provisioning: Get-AppxProvisionedPackage shall return nothing;
- app remnants: the app folders should disappear from Program Files\WindowsApps and from all the user profiles;
- de-registration: app references should be removed from the registry.
In addition I always check the event logs to see if something anomalous shows up.
So far so good. Yesterday I removed for the first time the Phone app: Microsoft.YourPhone_1.22052.136.0. As it often happens, this app is distributed as a bundle of four packages: the main package, the language package, the split-scale package and finally the bundle wrapper.
Remove-AppxPackage works as usual and completes with no error. The app does get de-staged, de-provisioned and de-registered, and all the app folders are removed. All, except the main package in Program Files\WindowsApps. Three of of four packages are deleted, but the main package Microsoft.YourPhone_1.22052.136.0_x64__... is still there.
Also, no errors are recorded in the logs: the Event Viewer only shows information-level entries. There is an anomalous entry though:

Code:

 Moving folder \\?\C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.YourPhone_1.22052.136.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe to \\?\C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Deleted\Microsoft.YourPhone_1.22052.136.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe3e67b0fc-79a5-4ff5-9180-e43cb20cd8e6. Result: 0x80070020.

The exit code is normally 0x0.
Still trying to figure out the reason for this strange behaviour. It never happened before. Also, the absence of errors in PowerShell and in the logs puzzles me. At the moment I can only guess. The main package may be need by other apps to work properly, but I am not aware of any method to easily retrieve the app dependence tree in Windows. I'll work on it and I will post back in case I find an explanation.

Cheers,
Mark