Stop bloatware reinstalling

Question

I have the reference image set up the way we like it with all the excess software removed.

Now we seal it with sysprep and it ALL comes back.

Is there a setting in the unattended file to stop the install of Tik-Tok and others?

This is a professional PC and our customers want the bare essentials.

At least there's no Candycrush in Win11!

Answer 1

Hello there,

In general, Sysprep does not remove applications. Some applications are sensitive to sysprep, but those are rare exceptions. Sysprep strips out the machine-specific settings like activation ID and SID, while leaving the installed programs for ease of deployment.

Sysprep has an additional provider that's added in Windows 10 and Windows 8 to clean Appx packages and to generalize the image. The provider works only if the Appx package is a per-user package or an all-user provisioned package.

To resolve this issue, remove the package for the user who's running sysprep, and also remove the provisioning.

I hope this information helps. If you have any questions please let me know and I will be glad to help you out.

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