Getting rid of pre-installed games is harder than you think

May 2, 2018 05:13 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft came under fire several times for not making Windows 10 a bloat-free operating system, and despite several updates, this hasn’t changed in a substantial way since the debut of the original RTM build nearly three years ago.

Removing the Windows 10 pre-installed apps shouldn’t be such a difficult thing to do since Microsoft itself included uninstalling options, but it’s not a secret that these items come and go with each update.

In other words, even if you delete the pre-installed apps, they could be restored by a future update, not to say that in some cases, it’s much harder than you think to get rid of them in the first place.

The video that you see here was posted on reddit by user drakulaboy and shows just how difficult it is to remove the apps that you don’t want in Windows 10. Uninstalling one game brings back another, and it happens in an infinite loop which for the casual user has no end.

How to avoid this

More tech-savvy users, however, might know how to fix this. It requires launching the Microsoft Store, updating all the apps, and then uninstalling the apps you didn’t want in the first place. Without updates, the bloatware comes back every time.

Some users, however, claim that not even this trick works and the pre-installed apps return after a system reboot.

“Well I opened the store, pressed get updates and got the YOURE GOOD TO GO checkmark. went ahead and restart laptop, issue is still there exactly as in the video. Also no changes are being saved in start menu so every game is still there and my own folders are not,” one reddit user explained.

As someone else suggests, this problem could be avoided if a clean install is performed. Uninstalling the bloatware without an Internet connection before setting up the system seems to do the magic, though it’s pretty clear this is far from being a very convenient solution for all users.