I worked on this topic again and I think this is the final recipe to remove metro apps, as I ran it on a laptop after upgrading to Win 8.1. Using code provided on Page 1 of this post : First I ran this: The process produced this feedback: (I'm showing the process with only 3 apps in this quotation, I cut out the other ones as there were many and showed the same thing over and over) The apps still show and run in the Start menu, so I ran this to remove Apps from current user profile: This produced a verbose, lengthy red feedback of errors. But it worked, the Metro apps are gone from my Start menu. VERIFICATION in Powershell listings: So it seems this procedure does uninstall Apps entirely. Thanks again abbodi1406!
[Hope I don't get banned for being a smart*** noob] "This felt so coercive, as if my laptop was becoming a client of MS instead of just being my own, independent machine." With all due respect, that's pretty funny. You'll be here all week, right? Everyone one I know with an independent machine have one thing in common - Linux. (Happy to see your issue is solved)
Made a cmd script to automate this App removal stuff. It sets the powershell policy to remotesigned, runs the 2 pshell commands, then sets it back to allsigned...