Windows 10: WindowsApps folder has 2 duplicate unusable, undiscoverable 65GB installations of Gears 5

I have spent last 3 hours trying to change folder ownership and security, to delete them, but nothing seems to work.

Do these folders get deleted when unused over time or is there any other way of removing them.

Thanks



:)

 

Duplicate apps in WindowsApps folder

Hi,

my Program Files\WindowsApps folder is growing in size and contains some duplicate app entries as below:

I am unable to find a way to remove the older versions of these apps. Is there a solution for this?

Regards

 

WindowsApps Folder Cleanup

Hi,

I've noticed, thanks to SpaceSniffer, that the Windowsapps folder is huge (2,4 Gb). That sounds strange since I don't have that lot of apps running.

I've gained access to the WApps folder taking ownership and there are a lot of old/unused/unknown folders referring to long time gone apps (2 Candy crush folders for 200Mb each??). I've managed to delete one of them (gaining full control) but for the rest
of the stuff it doesn't seem to be quite easy getting rid of them (I'm stuck with no full control permissions).

I've tried "Get-AppxPackage -allusers PackageFullName | Remove-AppxPackage" command and "dism /online /Remove-ProvisionedAppxPackage /PackageNameackageFullName" command in a powershell elevated perm window, both with no luck.

I'm considering to use brute force (from a bootable linux stick) and get rid of the most heavy packages:

Microsoft.Windows.Photos_2018.18081.14710.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

Microsoft.Office.OneNote_16001.10827.20178.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

Microsoft.Office.OneNote_16001.10827.20152.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

Microsoft.SkypeApp_12.1815.210.0_x64__kzf8qxf38zg5c

Microsoft.MSPaint_5.1809.1017.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

Microsoft.ZuneVideo_10.18082.10311.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

Microsoft.ZuneMusic_10.18091.10321.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

Microsoft.XboxApp_44.44.7002.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

Microsoft.MicrosoftOfficeHub_17.10314.31700.1000_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

Microsoft.BingFinance_4.26.12334.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

Microsoft.BingSports_4.25.11802.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

but to be sure to have win10 boot again I'm asking if there's any problem considering:

- Inside C:\Program Files\WindowsApps the are 239 folders

- if I run "Get-AppxPackage | Select Name, PackageFullName" it returns a list of more or less 90 packages

- if I run "dism /online /Get-ProvisionedAppxPackages" it returns a list of 20 packages

- NONE of the packages I'm planning to delete are found by the commands above (they are present only in the winapps folder)

I'm working on a win10 installation than comes with no formatting from 8.1 (I've got the idea that this stuff has been layered by the windows releases)

Any suggestion is very appreciated.

 

WindowsApps folder says permissions are corrupted and need to be deleted, is this normal or critical?

According to your description, I suggest you try the following steps:

1. Navigate to the location C:\Program Files.
   
2. Right-click on the WindowsApps folder, and select Properties.
   
3. Turn to Security tab and click on Advanced.
   
4. Click on Change and then type Users in Enter the object name to select area.
   
5. Click on OK, then click Apply > OK. You can also add the TrustedInstaller to the users list and check if it takes effect.
   

However, you might be still not able to access the files. The workaround is to go inside the C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\, and repeat the same way with the Microsoft.WindowsStore* folders.