Windows 10 How to prevent automatic app installs?

[zirkoni]

Hi!

I just did a clean install of Windows 10 Anniversary Update. After the OS had finished installing a few updates it began downloading and installing some useless games (Candy something something and others).

I have a slow internet connection so I had to wait for ~30 mins for all the games to download and install before I could continue downloading & re-installing my programs. These automatic downloads were using all my bandwidth and I couldn't even stop them (I tried clicking uninstall in the start menu but that just hid the icon & progress bars and the apps appeared back in the menu after they were installed).

Is there any way to prevent these automatic application installs? I really, really hate them. I'm using the Win10 Home edition.

 

[Neemobeer]

You can remove most of them from a powershell prompt Remove-AppxPackage "*partialappname*"

 

[zirkoni]

Yes, I know I can remove them but I'd like to prevent them from installing in the first place.

 

[Neemobeer]

If you're talking about for all new accounts going forward you can remove them with DISM

• From an elevated command prompt get a list of all the installed AppxPackages with DISM /Online /Get-ProvisionedAppxPackages
• Then remove it with Dism /online /Remove-ProvisionedAppxPackage /PackageName:Microsoft.MicrosoftSolitaireCollection_3.10.6302.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe
• This will completely remove it for any new users, if a given AppX package is staged for an existing user it will not remove that.
• You can see what applications are installed and staged by opening an elevated powershell prompt and typing Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers

 

[zirkoni]

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[zirkoni]

So, I guess the answer is they can't be stopped. And the same issue with system updates. I wonder how people with a dial-up connection are doing. Wait for a few days/weeks for the updates to download?

 

[Neemobeer]

If you use the commands in reply #4 that will remove them completely. The only way to do it from the get-go would require more work and technical skill than your average user has. In a nutshell the steps would be

• Extract the content from a Windows 10 ISO
• Mount the install.wim or install.esd file to a directory
• Run the commands from reply #4 replacing /Online with the offline mount point
• Unmount and finalize the WIM file and either build an iso to burn to disc or copy the content to a bootable usb media
• Install

In an enterprise setting you have tools that make it a lot easier than that such as WDS and the easiest tool to use would be SCCM but that is cost prohibitive for SOHO.

 

[zirkoni]

Solved it, this requires a registry edit:
Create a key "CloudContent" in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows.
Inside that key create a new DWORD called "DisableWindowsConsumerFeatures" and set the value to 1.