How to remove bloatware from your customers’ PCs

I recently delivered an N‑able N‑central Bootcamp called 15 things you can (and should) automate, shortly after that I also delivered another bootcamp called 15 MORE things you can (and should) automate. After doing a little prep for the second, this reminded me of a particular automation policy we have in the Automation Cookbook that allows you to remove Bloatware from your customers’/end users’ computers.

What is bloatware?

First of all let’s define exactly what bloatware is. Oxford Dictionary defines it as “software whose usefulness is reduced because of the excessive disk space and memory it requires” and “unwanted software included on a new computer or mobile device by the manufacturer”. Often these pieces of software are hidden on your device and come preinstalled by the manufacturer, distributor, or carrier—examples include things like health apps and trial versions of software. At best they can be annoying as they can slow down your device, at worst they can actually be harmful as they can leave you exposed to malware or spyware.

As MSPs and Internal IT Departments we need to drastically reduce the attack surface of our customer or employee machines. Having unnecessary software like this—whether they’re games or tools—can increase the company’s attack surface and can pose as serious risk to the business.

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Five reason to remove bloatware

This is far from a definitive list, but five key reasons to remove bloatware include:

1. Patching applications is already difficult enough without having applications that no one needs installed as well. The good news is N‑central has close to 100 applications that can be patched using the N‑central Third-Party Patch engine.
2. Patching through the Microsoft store or through vendor automatic updates is needless resource allocating for zero net benefit to the business or the end user.
3. These applications discreetly run in the background using up storage and memory.
4. They can significantly reduce battery life—removing bloatware is good for the environment!
5. They can create an unwanted attack surface if they aren’t updated or maintained. 

Identifying and removing bloatware from your system

In this blog I’m going to show you four tips you can use to identify and remove bloatware from your system.

1. Using PowerShell to identify bloatware

Here’s a PowerShell command you can use to see all of the apps installed on the computer

Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers |Format-Table

Alternatively, you can also run DISM to get a much better formatted list:

DISM /Online /Get-ProvisionedAppxPackages | select-string Packagename

2. Hiding Bloatware using “Remove-AppxPackage”

Once you have the list of bloatware apps on your system you can disable a package and remove it from the UI by running the following command:

Get-AppxPackage *AppName* | Remove-AppxPackage

Here are some of the most common packages that people remove from their systems. Simply replace *AppName* with the names below:

3. Deleting bloatware with PowerShell DISM

Using the DISM command listed above will give you an output similar to the below, which you can then use to delete the app packages one by one.

For the purpose of this example, I have highlighted the one I want to remove (the Skype Application).

To delete this from your system, run the following command:

DISM /Online /Remove-ProvisionedAppxPackage

/PackageName:Microsoft.SkypeApp_15.92.3204.0_neutral_~_kzf8qxf38zg5c

4. The Bloatware Automation from the N‑able Head Nerds Automation Cookbook

 Thankfully with N‑central RMM’s automation capabilities, there is a much easier way to do things. Instead of running commands and doing this via Powershell, we have an automation policy (amp) that you can add to N‑central and run it whenever you are onboarding a new customer, or if you have a new laptop you are provisioning.

To remove bloatware from Windows 10 with N‑able N‑central, please use this link to obtain the script.

If you’re making it one of your new year’s resolutions to get rid of all the bloatware on your systems, this will help get you started.

Jason Murphy is the Head Nerd for N‑central and Efficiency at N‑able. You can follow him on reddit on r/nable or Twitter at @ncentral_nerd.