It was always licensed. You never owned it and none of this is even real. Just nobody noticed. Nadella wants that telemetry so bad; I'll just print it out and mail it to his house.
"MS did such a big mistake with the whole Store thing" Not really, Windows is a commercial product and the Store and all the other pre installed apps is how they're going to make money. Compare it to the pre installed apps on your phone and the abominations phone makers come up with like TouchWiz. Ofcourse most people aren't going to root Windows so they will never know how much better things could be.
I do not agree, like Enterprise LTSB they should offer a Pro version too. Store apps and supplied apps are a big joke, we give up control and have limited functions. Really who will really use Paint 3D as example, if I need better paint jobs I will use better applications like paintshop etc. Xbox app? I have no xbox will never buy one too. Edge? consumes more desktop space than IE11, but agree it looks a bit more modern, but for most IE11 is way more easy to use in real life. To much bloated apps are getting in the os i'm not waiting for, this counts for a lot other users too. For some that was a reason to go back to windows 7 as it nows takes a lot of time to get windows 10 lesser bloated like windows 7 was. Lucky I still can use it without setup an online user account.
Woohoo! I did it! I got rid of all 3 - Cortana, Windows Defender Security Service, and ShellExperienceHost WITHOUT messing up the UI and I tweaked the crap of the OS! The Start Menu button of course does not work and the error makes you sign out and sign back in. However, taskbar is fully functional, so is MS Edge, and Event Viewer does not show any red exclamation alerts that Cortana or ShellExperienceHost are not responding. Instead, Event Viewer reports both being in Absent mode and all is peaceful. I also discovered that Netflix and quite a few new Apps rely on the Windows Push Notificaton service (specifically the User version), but once again with all these tweaks applied, I cannot download or update anything Store-related and I could care less about it. Here's what I did: - Did NOT apply any tweaks or mess with ANY services, although most tasks were disabled. - Disabled UAC, but did not take ownership of ANYTHING at all. - Used the repository tweak (with NSudo to run as Trusted Installer OR System) and set all Apps Inbox to 0, except for Windows Store, Calculator, Netflix, Xbox and Framework stuff, but I did include Cortana and ShellExperienceHost. With NSUdo there was no need to do the whole copy and paste and kill process thing! You just open the database file, edit it, and save it! - Applied: Get-AppXPackage | Remove-AppXPackage Get-AppXPackage -allusers | Remove-AppXPackage Get-AppXPackage -user MonarchX | Remove-AppXPackage *** Those commands did work at removing all the related gunk from the Start Menu and registry I guess, etc., but they, of course, did not remove the actual files or the SearchUI.exe or ShellExperienceHost.exe processes in the background *** - Rebooted - Used NSudo 4.3 on CBSEnum from drive C root direcetory to find the same packages I just uninstalled with PowerShell commands. - Uninstalled that crap fully! All contents of Cortana folder and ShellExperienceHost in SystemApps folder is now gone - background SearchUI.exe and ExperienceShellHost.exe are also gone + no more crazt Event Viewer. ***When I tried to use NSudo with CBSEnum BEFORE changing Inbox repository settings and using PowerShell to uninstall them, CBSEnum would produce an error at the very end and the package would not uninstall...*** ***Tweaking the crap out of services, tasks, and drivers also prevented me from successful removal of those apps! *** I suggest ths: - Get rid of all the apps you do not want or need via whichever means are necessary. - Disable Tasks - Disable Services - Disable Filters and Driver Services - Keep UAC Disabled, but attempt to NOT take ownership of ANY folders! To disable stubborn tasks and services without taking ownership I simply used NSudo as System or TrustedInstaller on programs like Autoruns, which in turn, made it possible for me to disable any tasks and/or services! That's it, there is nothing else I want to tweak, a thought that really scares me...
LTSB is not some holy grail. It still has apps and microsoft account stuff. The latter I'm having trouble removing fully. And get this, all the apps phone home, even the settings app, even when the telemetry is uninstalled. Win10 is a caricature of previous windows. Like you see an OS in there but then all this bonzi buddy stuff runs on top.
for anyone still interested... locations that are known about; C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Packages C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\AppRepository C:\Program Files\WindowsApps C:\Windows\InfusedApps C:\Windows\HoloShell C:\Windows\PrintDialog C:\Windows\ImmersiveControlPanel C:\Windows\SystemApps