25

I have uninstalled Bing Maps, Travel and a few other Win8 apps from my computer. However, C:\Program Files\WindowsApps still lists them, happily taking up 1.5 GB of space.

Is there a better way to fully uninstall every trace of these apps than to simply delete the files by hand?

2
  • Perhaps this will help you get rid of those last few pesky apps. :)
    – Karan
    Jan 14, 2013 at 0:35
  • @Karan Unfortunately it didn't; all the code there uses the same calls and has the same problem with those last few pesky ones...
    – RomanSt
    Jan 14, 2013 at 13:56

3 Answers 3

20

Built-in apps are called provisioned apps. They are scheduled to be installed for each new user that registers on a Windows 8 PC, so you can't uninstall them completely from the Start screen. To do so, you've to use Windows PowerShell command remove-AppxProvisionedPackage, like so:

remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -package Microsoft.BingTravel_1.2.0.145_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe -online

That would uninstall the Travel app. To remove Bing Map app, the command would be:

remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -package Microsoft.BingMaps_1.2.0.136_x86__8wekyb3d8bbwe -online

Microsoft.BingMaps_1.2.0.136_x86__8wekyb3d8bbwe is the app package name, which basically is the folder that you find in C:\Program Files\WindowsApps.

To uninstall apps installed from the Windows Store, the command is Remove-AppxPackage. It's syntax is as below:

Remove-AppxPackage PackageFullName

Note: Do not add -online parameter at the end of this command. [source]

4
  • 4
    Nice! This worked for 25% of the directories in there, but for 75% of them it says "The system cannot find the file specified". Any ideas about these?
    – RomanSt
    Jan 12, 2013 at 21:09
  • I've updated my answer. See if the second command works.
    – Leo
    Jan 13, 2013 at 7:02
  • 3
    Alright, Remove-AppxPackage has removed two thirds of the remaining apps; for the rest it fails with "Windows cannot remove <app> because the current user does not have that package installed". Is there absolutely no way to remove them? One of these is Bing Travel, and this is a clean install with just a single user.
    – RomanSt
    Jan 13, 2013 at 12:15
  • 1
    This doesn't appear to remove app packages from "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps" for example I used Remove-AppxPackage on Candy Crush Soda Saga in Windows 10 and although the command appeared to run successfully the package is still there. Is there a safe way to delete these packages from disk?
    – Earl Sven
    Apr 5, 2018 at 7:54
10

I had success with the following method. Press Win+X, select Command Prompt (Admin). Run the command

DISM.exe /Online /Remove-ProvisionedAppxPackage /PackageName:Microsoft.BingTravel_1.2.0.145_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

Use folder names in the "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps" folder as package names.

Source: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh852635.aspx

To automate this process, I got a list of packages by running "dir /b". Then converted it into a batch file like this

@echo off
cd /d  C:\Program Files\WindowsApps
DISM.exe /Online /Remove-ProvisionedAppxPackage /PackageName:B9ECED6F.ASUSCalculator_1.0.0.18_neutral__qmba6cd70vzyy
DISM.exe /Online /Remove-ProvisionedAppxPackage /PackageName:B9ECED6F.AsusConverter_1.0.0.27_neutral__qmba6cd70vzyy
DISM.exe /Online /Remove-ProvisionedAppxPackage /PackageName:B9ECED6F.TheWorldClock_1.0.0.6_neutral__qmba6cd70vzyy
DISM.exe /Online /Remove-ProvisionedAppxPackage /PackageName:Microsoft.Adera_1.0.0.4957_x86__8wekyb3d8bbwe
DISM.exe /Online /Remove-ProvisionedAppxPackage /PackageName:Microsoft.BingFinance_1.2.0.135_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe
....
pause

Run the batch file as Administrator. This removed all packages in WindowsApps directory: 34 folders, 1.5GB.

1
  • Curious. I've not done anything about this for months; last time I tried I still had 1GB+ of files left in WindowsApps. But today I thought I'll try your method only to find out they're all gone now. Perhaps I needed a few reboots or a Windows Update session or something like that...
    – RomanSt
    Jul 23, 2013 at 18:14
5

(in 2016) one can uninstall Windows Store apps using free GeekUninstaller app GeekUninstaller

It's a super small & fast guy, also cleans up stuff in registry. Works on Win10 too

2
  • 1
    You don't have to install it, just download as ZIP or 7Z, unpack and run it. This is the most easy way to remove such apps (including all the registry entries).
    – PeterCo
    Mar 31, 2018 at 8:46
  • nice tool, it works pretty good on Windows 10. Unfortunately it can't uninstall "provisioned" apps which occupy ~400 MB in C:\Program Files\WindowsApps of freshly installed Windows 8.1 N
    – AntonK
    Nov 4, 2021 at 0:21

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .