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Microsoft's 'Recall' feature can't be uninstalled after all (mashable.com)

submitted 2 months ago by 1984@lemmy.today to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Who is surprised?

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[–] scutiger@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Windows does have its own command-line package manager. I don't know if it can remove Recall, but last I checked it could remove Cortana. It would just get reinstalled soon after, but that could be prevented with some file-naming trickery. If you give a file the same name as the folder used to have and make it read-only, it couldn't remake the folder and wouldn't reinstall.

I wouldn't be surprised if you can still do that now.

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Which one do you mean? Winget which is their newest attempt at creating a package manager that isn't an absolute piece of garbage, or their crappy CLI for managing MSIX/APPX modules? Because I remember using the latter to try and remove Cortana back when I first tried Windows 10. Fast forward, I removed all the garbage I didn't need, applied a Windows update, restarted my PC and it was all reinstalled. I wiped that SSD the same day and went back to Linux. This was the last time I used Windows on any of my personal devices.

[–] scutiger@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

I was talking about Appx. I haven't used Windows in a while, but that was how I got rid of Cortana. The key part was the read-only file named after the folder that couldn't be replaced.

[–] r_deckard@lemmy.world -1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'd say you didn't actually remove the garbage. "Settings, apps, uninstall" doesn't really get rid of it, the deployment package is still hanging around.

You need to use powershell to de-deploy those packages.

It's a bit like the difference between "apt remove" and "apt purge"

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 months ago

You need to use powershell to de-deploy those packages.

Oh I did, I spent hours looking up different pwsh commands and package names to clean it all up