Windows 10 comes with a number of apps, usually we call them as bloatware in the mobile phones segments. Today we will see how to get rid of most of those pre-installed or bundled apps and a method to re-install the Microsoft Store app. By uninstalling the bundled software, trust me, you are going to save hell loads of bandwidth and storage.

Prerequisites: I am expecting you to have moderate experiences with Windows OS, as the below instructions might require you to open PowerShell as an administrator. For a fail safe situation, I will ask you to have minimum one more user account created and signed on prior you try to remove the pre-installed apps from your user account.

Once PowerShell console opens, you should able to see something like this on top of the console window “Administrator: Windows PowerShell”.

Before uninstalling the pre-installed apps, that includes “Microsoft Store”, we have to make a note of the Store application package name. Please note, the package name changes between builds, hence you must run the below command from your own Windows 10 machine, ie, do not copy from this post.

Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers -Name "Microsoft.WindowsStore"

So for my Windows 10 box, I need to copy the value for “PackageFullName”, that is

Microsoft.WindowsStore_12011.1001.1.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

Side note: Please give extra attention to “PackageUserInformation”. This element lists all the user accounts those already have the “Microsoft Store” app installed. My work laptop (this machine) has four User accounts (default Administrator account disabled) including the domain user account. For my local and domain accounts, the store app is already installed and for other two accounts the app has been staged. Ie, not yet installed.

Please copy the “PackageFullName” element value to a notepad and save the file on the desktop with a name that you could remember.

In the same PowerShell console issue the below command

Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | Remove-AppxPackage

This is going to start uninstalling the pre-installed apps. There will be some funny Red color texts, highlighted bars over the PowerShell prompt. Don’t get panicked. Based on the resources available this might take a while to finish. Once the PowerShell prompt returned, you will see that all the pre-installed apps are gone… for good!

However we need the Microsoft Store app back for downloading the most essential apps like Calculator, Mail client & few other. In the same PowerShell console, construct a command like below. Please make sure you will replace the package name with the one you have copied to the text file earlier.

Add-AppxPackage -register "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.WindowsStore_12011.1001.1.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\appxmanifest.xml" –DisableDevelopmentMode

Microsoft Store app should be installed instantly and you can proceed with installing your essential apps from the store now.

Like all other times, I ask you not to proceed, if you don’t know what you are going to end up with!

One much detailed information you can find here [Guide] How to Uninstall and Remove All Built-in Apps in Windows 10 – AskVG