Windows 11 still randomly installing bloatware without user consent

October 2022 · 4 minute read
Windows 11 bloatware

Microsoft has always been a target of OS puritans because of its incessant approach of bundling unwanted programs.

Its been almost four months now since Microsoft released Windows 11 to the general public. But there are some of us that have been using this OS since it was just an Insider preview.

And, ever since Windows 11 was taking its first baby steps, we reported that the operating system kept insisting on installing bloatware on users’ PCs, without any request or consent.

If you were under the impression that the situation has changed even a tiny bit, think again, as people are still complaining about this annoying side of the OS.

The new OS insists on installing bloatware

Even while looking through the first Windows 11 Insider build, back in June, we noticed that it came with two apps that were pre-bought: Twitter and …. Candy Crush Saga!

Twitter might be ok but I definitely didn’t ask for that ubiquitous game to be laying around hogging space on my drive.

What’s quite annoying is that it’s saying these apps were “purchased yesterday”, but that of course never happened. The message also changes to purchased moments ago or purchased minutes ago.

Even though many have already performed the transition from Windows 10 to Windows 11, the vast majority preferred to remain on the old operating system, to avoid dealing with all the bugs.

A wise choice, some would say, as even the ones that upgraded are now having second thoughts about whether they should revert or remain on Windows 11.

But even Windows 10 users have to deal with bloatware, so what’s the big deal? Actually, people were under the impression that this annoying aspect would be eliminated with this new experience.

Sure, some would say that this can be avoided by using Regedit to alter some system keys, but even then, since you need an internet connection to set up Windows 11, you’d still get unwanted apps.

So it’s falsely claiming that some apps were bought to hide away the fact that we simply don’t need them. The good thing is that at least some of them aren’t installed. However, you will still have installed all the hoard of apps that belong to Microsoft:

At least from the looks of our build machine, we found that Spotify Music was the single non-Microsoft application that came pre-installed in the new Store. And of course, some of them are part of the family and you need them. There’s a couple of apps that will no longer be present.

Obviously, this kind of behavior isn’t exactly new for Microsoft. Here’s a couple of reminders from the past:

What is interesting is that according to our extensive survey, bloatware won’t actually bother 11% of new Windows 11 users.

Is ther a way to stop this from happening?

The only workaround if you want a truly clean installation, according to some of the more tech-savvy users, is to create a custom image with an Enterprise version of Windows and have the registry key set as part of the setup.

Remember that Windows 11 is still in the beginning phase of its life, and some solutions that we now crave aren’t yet available, unfortunately.

If you’re dealing with the same situation on Windows 10, we have an article that will surely help you overcome it.

You can also try these solutions on your Windows 11 device, but seeing how the methods were conceived for the previous OS, we can guarantee 100% that it will actually work.

Hopefully, Microsoft will listen to the community further, and based on feedback, they will remove these software intrusions, as small and insignificant as they may be.

Have you also been struggling with the unwanted installation and manual removal of these applications as well? Share your experience with us in the comments section below.

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