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Performance
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Unwanted Programs and Store AppsWindows 10 installations include a large amount of bloatware and marginally useful software that I would prefer to get rid of. I want to do this for a number of reasons, including reducing clutter in the Start Menu, improving performance, reducing memory consumption and reducing storage space used up on my SSD. Prior to Windows 8, programs were just programs (a.k.a. "desktop apps") and we knew how to get rid of the ones we didn't want. Now, apparently, there is another type of program to deal with, UWP (Universal Windows Platform) Apps from the Microsoft Store. Uninstalling a desktop app seems to be the same as it was in, for example, Windows XP. You just find it in the list of programs in Control Panel and use the uninstall feature. How thorough the uninstallation is depends on the care that the program's author took and you often end up with keys in the registry and files and folders strewn around the file system. UWP apps don't appear in the list of Programs given by Control Panel. They may appear, along with desktop apps, in the list given by Apps & features in Settings. In this case, you may be able to use the uninstall feature. But, there may not be one, in which case the Uninstall button will be greyed out. The amount of storage given for an app in this list can be wildly inaccurate. For example, Simple Solitaire is shown with a size of 2.08 MB. Actually, this UWP app takes up 172 MB. Uninstallation Methods1 - Programs and Features, Right-Click, UninstallControl Panel → Programs or Control Panel → Programs and Features, right-click on title, select Uninstall. 2 - Apps & features, Left-Click, UninstallFind your way to Apps & features in Settings. For example, left-click on Start, type "apps" and left-click on the Best match offered. Or, if you know how to get to Settings, just left-click on Apps. Scroll down to find whatever it is you want to uninstall and (left-)click anywhere on its entry in the list. The entry will expand to show a row of buttons underneath. There will probably be two. The left button will either be Move or Modify. The right button will be Uninstall. If the Uninstall button is greyed out, you're out of luck, you've wasted your time and you can't uninstall this program or app using this method. Otherwise, click the button and wait while the program or app is unistalled. How far the uninstallation goes is out of your control. Registry entries may or may not be cleaned up. Storage may or may not be freed. Everything that appeared in the list produced by method 1, above, also appears here. However, the reported size of the program / app may be slightly different. In addition, lots of other apps appear. 3 - Windows PowerShell, Remove-AppxPackageGet-AppxPackage -allusers This command writes the list of store applications to a file named Get-AppxPackage.txt in the current folder. Get-AppxPackage -allusers > Get-AppxPackage.txt This command outputs the entry only for the specified store app, in this case the OneNote component of Microsoft Office. The last part must exactly match the value of the Name field of the entry. It's not always easy to figure out the name of a store app. For example, the name of the feared and loathed Cortana is Microsoft.549981C3F5F10, obviously to make it harder to find and remove and thus increase the fear and loathing. Get-AppxPackage -allusers Microsoft.Office.OneNote This command looks as if it should remove the specified store app. What it actually seems to do is change the state of the store app from Installed to Staged. This means that it isn't available to any of the users, but it still takes up the same amount of storage. This is a new meaning of the word "remove". Get-AppxPackage -allusers Microsoft.Office.OneNote | Remove-AppxPackage  4 - Third-Party UninstallerThe free version of GeekUninstaller, version 1.4.8, build 145, is easy to download and use. The ZIP archive contains a single executable file. The program produces a window similar to that shown at right consisting of a list of programs or store apps and a simple main menu. The interesting menu choices are as follows: View → Desktop Apps — Conventional programs, such as you would install yourself, are displayed. The list is more-or-less (but not exactly) the list you'd get in Control Panel → Programs (Method 1, above). At right you can see that I've installed Steam, some games, AOMEI Partition Assistant, WinZip, etc. There aren't many things here that I want to remove; perhaps the HP bloatware but especially Microsoft Edge, which has no uninstall option in Control Panel. View → Windows Store Apps — Some new kind of "apps", apparently available only via the Windows Store, are displayed. These are the things that showed up in the list you got using Settings → Apps and Features (Method 2, above) that didn't show up using Control Panel → Programs (Method 1). List of Programs / Store Apps that I Uninstall
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