Overview

As customers migrate from Windows 7 to Windows 8 and Windows 10 they may notice an increase in the time taken for a system to log a user into the computer for the first time. One item that contributes to the increase in login time is the installation of provisioned Windows Applications into the user's profile.

Provisioned Windows Applications

Windows 8 and Windows 10 introduced a new type of Windows Application, commonly referred to as Modern (or Metro) applications. A number of Modern UI applications come preinstalled with Windows 8 and Windows 10.

Modern Applications are installed in a different manner that associates them with the user profile that they were initially purchased or installed under, as such the pre-installed Modern UI applications are installed when each new user logs into the system for the first time. This installation process can extend the time that it takes for a user to log into the computer for the first time significantly.

Removing Modern UI applications.

Modern UI applications can be installed after the user logs in, however as each new user logs in the applications that have been previously provisioned as part of the system will be reinstalled into each user. To prevent this the Modern UI applications, have to be removed using a specific PowerShell command that removes them from the list of applications automatically installed for the user.

Remove-AppXProvisionedPackage –Online –PackageName <PACKAGENAME>

A list of applications provisioned on the local machine can be listed by running the command below;

Get-AppXProvisionedPackage –Online | Select PackageName

Removing the Modern UI Applications can reduce the time taken for new user creation by removing individual programs that will not be used in your environment, for example, to remove The Weather Application you would run the command;

Remove-AppXProvisionedPackage –Online –PackageName Microsoft.BingWeather_4.6.169.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe

To remove all the Modern UI applications from the system you can run the following command;

Get-AppXProvisionedPackage –Online | Remove-AppXProvisionedPackage –Online

This will remove all the Modern UI applications from the system and will prevent them from being installed as new users log into the system, it will however remove the Windows Store Application and this may prevent you from being able to re-install the applications later on without reinstalling the client OS.

Some additional applications such as games and other cloud content are installed by the operating system after the creation of the user profile, this can be disabled by creating the following registry key on your systems;

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\CloudContent
Key: DisableWindowsConsumerFeatures
Type: DWORD (32-bit) Value
Value: 1

This will prevent the installation of any remaining applications that would be promoted through the Windows Store.