Remove Windows 10 Apps with DISM: How to remove pre-provisioned apps from Windows Image

You can use app package-servicing commands to add, remove, and list provisioned app packages (.appx or .appxbundle) in a Windows image. An .appxbundle, new for Windows 10, is a collection of app and resource packages used together to enrich the app experience while minimizing the disk footprint on a given PC. These apps are available to users upon login on Windows 10 devices. Windows starts to install apps for that particular user. These apps are referred to as provisioned apps (pre-installed apps). Here are some possible errors you can encounter while resolving this issue Error 0xc1570103: The license file was not found in the specified path, and how to fix error 0xc1510114: The wim file needs to be remounted.

Pre-provisioned apps can be useless for some organisations. Often times, these apps are deleted and there are new updates from Microsoft prompting you to upgrade your Operating System. Most times, after these OS are upgraded to the latest version of Windows, these preinstalled apps appear again. To mitigate this issue, this appx needs to be removed in the Windows Image even before installing the OS.

For related articles, please see how to fix error 0xc1510114: The wim file needs to be remounted, Error 0x80070002: When trying to mount an image file, Error code 15601: How to resolve DISM unspecified error when removing preinstalled packages, and Error 0xc1420127: The specified image in the specified wim is already mounted for read and write access.

The idea is, when an upgrade is performed, this appx will not be detected by the upgrade and therefore the appx will not be deployed.Before proceeding with the steps below, the Install.wim file needs to be mounted, after which you can manipulate the windows image file with DISM Tool. To mount a wim file, please use the command below.

dism /Mount-Wim /WimFile:<Path>image.wim /Index:<indexnumber> /MountDir:<mountDir>

dism /Mount-Wim /WimFile:G:\Path-to-the-install.wim-file\install.wim /Index:2 /MountDir:G:\Path-to-the-mount-file\MountZ

How to remove Pre-installed Applications? Via PowerShell or DISM. In this guide, you will learn how to remove packages in an install.wim image.
1: DISM: It makes sense to query the Windows image to get the pre-installed apps and this can be achieved using any of the commands below.

dism /Image: <MountedDir> /Get-Provisionedappxpackages

dism /image:G:\Path-to-the-mount-file\MountZ  /Get-Provisionedappxpackages

Now that you have been able to determine the Package Family name (UWP), we can now proceed to remove them.
– Note: This Family name changes from one version of Windows to the other. Please pay attention to it or else, you will get an error.

Now, you can proceed to remove the appx after determining the PackageFullName to use as shown in the image above. use the /Remove-Package – Removes packages from the image to get rid of the package name this way.

dism /image:G:\Path-to-the-mount-file\MountZ /Remove-Provisionedappxpackage /PackageName:Microsoft.WindowsCalculator_2015.1009.20.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe

dism /image:G:\Path-to-the-mount-file\MountZ /Remove-Provisionedappxpackage /PackageName:Microsoft.XboxSpeechToTextOverlay_1.21.13002.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

To check whether your selected apps have been removed, enter the following command again.

dism /image:G:\Path-to-the-mount-file\MountZ /Get-Provisionedappxpackages

If you are done at this step modifying the WIM file, all that is left to do is to commit (save) the WIM. This will unmount and save the newest state.

dism /unmount-wim /mountdir:G:\Path-to-the-mount-file\MountZ /commit

2: PowerShell: You can also use PowerShell to add, remove, and list app packages (.appx or .appxbundle) per image or per user in a Windows installation. See the following articles on how to use the PowerShell instead of DISM. For more information, see the following link. These steps and explanations are similar to DISM.

Mount-WindowsImage -Path .\mount\ -ImagePath .\install.wim -Index 2

Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -PackageName Microsoft.WindowsCalculator_2015.1009.20.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe -Path .\mount

Dismount-WindowsImage -Path .\mount -Save

I hope you found this blog post helpful. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comment session.