I may have missed it, but is there - or can there be - a script created that can run through the removal of the most common Windows bloatware? Mostly the things we see with new, out-of-box computers like TikTok, Spotify, King games, Messenger/Instagram/Facebook, Prime Video, etc.
We’ve deployed our own powershell scripts in the past to handle this, but it would be a nice addition to have it included in the ImmyBot global library as well.
Are these apps installed by vendors? Or is it a Windows Home thing?
I deployed a HP laptop recently that has McAfee on it, except it’s nowhere to be found in Add/Remove programs or anything so ImmyBot can’t see it. But otherwise we just create a separate deployment for removal of each of the things HP thinks we need (eg Wolf security that just broke everything a while back).
I think one script that removes more than one piece of software would go against the ImmyBot design, so you’d still be creating a software or task per bloatware item.
It’s something we see with new Windows workstations pretty often (running 10/11 Pro) with all the random preinstalled apps, similar to McAfee, but you’re right in that they don’t appear in the add/remove programs. I wouldn’t necessarily say they’re vendor-specific, they’re just unnecessary apps in a business environment, preinstalled by Microsoft.
Typically we just build an array of each app in PowerShell and remove them from all workstations that way.
@AKorb check out the task called “Configure Suggested Content (Content Delivery Manager)” it will prevent the apps being able to download. It needs to be ran before a user logs into the computer.
Aha! That looks like it’ll work, thanks Gav. I’ll test it out and see how we fare.