Windows 10: Any way to get useless games out of Windows 10 Enterprise?

Yeah, but since we've already deployed Enterprise to most of the building, switching to LTSB now would be an even bigger pain.
Not to mention, Edge isn't too bad, some of our employees like it. I don't mind, I just don't want Candy Crush being installed.

FWIW: that GPO I mentioned actually unpins all that crap too, even with no network connection, the default start menu ends up cut in half almost.

Also, it appears that does NOT work in Home edition, because of the fact you can't use Group Policy stuff in Home.

Let me spin up another Enterprise VM, join it to the domain where our GPOs kick in and show you what the default start menu looks like - it's pretty nifty. No more games/Twitter/crap like that.

Edit:

After joining the domain and logging on (where we have that GPO to disable cloud content), look at the beautiful default start menu





The only game left is Solitaire (which IS included on the disc, not related to cloud content) and I have a PowerShell script to remove that one before ever joining the domain anyway *Smile

 

What is your problem then?

Of course there will be useless people who do nothing all day but they would do nothing all day if they had XP or 7 or 8 or 10.

If your problem is you have lazy people then just sack them.

If your problem is you have wonderful people who (despite that) might be distracted by CandyCrush then you are mad and you should just resign from the company, buy a small island in the Caribbean and stop worrying about it.

IMO (obviously)

 

Nah, the problem is that Microsoft is installing games on an Enterprise OS, which is just stupid. I trust people to not play them, but they shouldn't be there in the first place.

So now with that GPO set, one less thing to worry about

 

Who?

 

At the risk of repetition you have a choice.

You can install Pro (with all the games)
You can install Enterprise (with all the games)
You can install LTSB (without)

or

You can make your choice:

Your install the latest version of Windows for your company (Enterprise I guess)
Install Office and whatever other programs you want
Set your start menu as you desire (this is trivial)

and install that on everyone's PC

If you don't know how you should employ someone else.

 

I feel like you're missing the point of this entire thread.

My complaint was that Microsoft included the "download games from the cloud!" features into the "Enterprise" version, which is designed to be used in workplaces. There's no logical reason for this besides shameless ad revenue.

The only solution I was able to come up with was to remove the games after they were installed (as they don't come back unless you manually reinstall them)

No, this has nothing to do with the start menu. I've explained this already. If you click on Candy Crush in the start menu, yes it will download and install. But even if you unpin it, the game will be downloaded at some point in the near future (I haven't tested this extensively, it could be 2-3 reboots, or it could just be 10-15 minutes after first logging in, whatever)

Because these aren't actually preinstalled, the PowerShell method of removing them doesn't work as they aren't technically there to begin with! They get downloaded in the background.

So... the real answer, which I've already mentioned in my bumped reply a page back, is to set a Group Policy object called "Turn off Microsoft consumer experiences" and apply it to all domain computers. You can also do this on your own local machine using gpedit if you're using Windows 10 Pro.

I don't know what it is about this forum... I posted another thread asking how to stop OneDrive from continually readding itself to libraries and got into a massive 4-page-long argument with some member who couldn't read my question and kept thinking I wanted to "disable OneDrive" when I clearly stated in the first post that I did not want to do that.

I'm not going to argue about this anymore.

The fact is that all versions of Windows 10 (minus LTSB) automatically download and install unwanted apps in the background whether or not they are on your start menu. Unpinning them does not stop this. The ONLY ways to get rid of them are to either wait for them to all be installed and remove them one by one, or just set the policy I mentioned...

 

Well OK then, glad you found your solution.

Seems that LTSB would be better choice for you if you find it confusing to make an image that you want.