How to get rid of Candy Crush Soda Saga and other Windows 10 Start Menu junk for good!

[jmak]

Use a custom StartLayout, that way you don't have to remove apps from the image. However the apps will still appear in the Start Menu, but you can use AppLocker to prevent users from running them.

That's fine for single user PCs, but on shared devices, every time a user logs in to a machine for the first time it installs all of the unwanted apps which can take a while...

[CHiLL]

That's fine for single user PCs, but on shared devices, every time a user logs in to a machine for the first time it installs all of the unwanted apps which can take a while...

We have no perfmance issues and I have all the apps still in and push the StartLayout file to about 400 machines.

[mdrabble]

Just having a look as OSDeploy and the command New-OSBuildTask - is there anyway to add apps to be kept instead having to manually select them to be removed via -RemoveAppx Edited October 31, 2019 by mdrabble

[garethEds]

Just having a look as OSDeploy and the command New-OSBuildTask - is there anyway to add apps to be kept instead having to manually select them to be removed via -RemoveAppx

 

Isn't anything you don't select left in there? I assumed they were - and you choose the ones you want to remove.

 

Gareth

[dobbyit]

Use a custom StartLayout, that way you don't have to remove apps from the image. However the apps will still appear in the Start Menu, but you can use AppLocker to prevent users from running them.

Do you have your startlayout set via group policy or via machine install

[CHiLL]

Do you have your startlayout set via group policy or via machine install

Group Policy, as a user configuration, not machine.

[FirstClass]

Thanks for the info

[Owen2000]

This is awesome

[Garacesh]

Bit of a necrobump, have MS changed how you list the installed packages?

I'm putting together a new image for over the summer and that means updating the package list.

 

(Get-AppXPackage).Name | Sort works just fine and gives me a nice list

The other command I have on file - (Get-AppXProvisionedPackage -Online).DisplayName | Sort - throws a The request is not supported error.

[Norphy]

Both work for me on the current builds of Windows 11 and 10 21H2.

[Garacesh]

Huh, weird. It's 21H2 I'm trying to build and it just does not like it.

 

Edit: Lol looks like it's AppLocker. My bad!

Edited June 20, 2022 by Garacesh

[Garacesh]

Too long for me to edit it, oops. Just dropping this here in case anybody runs into the same issue at any point:

When running Get-AppXProvisionedPackage (and other such tools, like Get-WindowsCapability, I assume this will affect any cmdlet that uses -Online), Windows would try to spawn and execute Appdata\Local\Temp\GUIDGUID-GUID-GUID-GUID-GUIDGUID\DIMSHOST.EXE

 

The solution was an exception for:

Publisher: O=MICROSOFT CORPORATION, L=REDMOND, S=WASHINGTON, C=US

Product name: MICROSOFT® WINDOWS® OPERATING SYSTEM

File name: DISMHOST.EXE

Version: * (And above)

[lornebooker]

De-crapify is always a life saver !

[supportman]

Looks like Microsoft finally listened!!

 

https://www.windowslatest.com/2025/07/10/removing-microsoft-apps-could-become-easy-in-windows-11-25h2/

[kennysarmy]

On 14/07/2025 at 16:07, supportman said:

Looks like Microsoft finally listened!!

 

https://www.windowslatest.com/2025/07/10/removing-microsoft-apps-could-become-easy-in-windows-11-25h2/

 

I've just tested and it seems to work!