Cannot remove downloaded data from WindowsApps folder after removing a game from my PC

jamesireland3 · Apr 21, 2020

I bought but had refunded the Dirt Rally 2.0 game. The game was removed from my Windows Store account, but the game which takes up a whopping 120GB of space is still on my drive. I have done quite a lot of troubleshooting on this but have so far had no
luck... I am an experienced IT tech, so I have had a good go at this myself. Things I have tried:

Gone into Settings > Apps > Filtered by drive and removed Dirt Rally from here

The install was onto a secondary drive, so I tried deleting it from the folder but this did not work.

So I tried to take ownership of the folder. This appears to work on the top level folder but the files in the sub-directories do not inherit the permissions from above.

I have drilled down, hoping to just delete some of the game files to free up some space, but when I go into the "Change Owner" dialog, first thing strange it says "Unable to display current owner" and when I click on change it says "You do not have permission
to view or edit this objects permission settings" (I am administrator)

I even tried booting from an Ubuntu live CD, but this particular drive is a RAID0 so it was unable to open it.

This is the only game I have installed from the Windows Store, so happy to just get rid of whatever is in there...

I appreciate any help or guidance on this.

:)

jamesireland3

Further to this, because the game is available on Ultimate now, I have reinstalled, it. It reinstalled instantly and the game runs no problem. I can then choose to uninstall it but the game still remains on my HDD. Its like the uninstaller just does not
work.

I've tried to get hold of Microsoft support but have not been able to get through for two days now.

jamesireland3

the WindowsApps folder is a system folder, if something were not deleted, you should try to use troubleshooter

Could you elaborate in which way to use the troubleshooter? I can open the troubleshooter, I have tried the "Windows Store Apps" troubleshooter and it just says "Troubleshooting couldn't identify the problem".

The problem I have is these files are obviously orphaned, as it does not appear in the Apps list anymore... The game has been removed from my library without deleting the content from my PC. The OS is probably not even aware that the folder exists.

I would format the drive but I have 350GB of other data that I would like to keep, I may start syncing that data to another drive in case that is the way this thing goes. Thanks for your suggestion though and I appreciate any other help you can offer me.

jamesireland3

I just update this in case anybody else has this issue.

I reinstalled the game (did not have to re-download as all of the files already existed)

I then went into Settings > Apps, selected Dirt Rally 2 and selected the option to "move" the installation to another drive. This worked after some time.... Again in the Settings > Apps I chose to uninstall and this time the game files were removed.

Korhog

the WindowsApps folder is a system folder, if something were not deleted, you should try to use troubleshooter

Guys_Im_Tyler

I am attempting to uninstall the games from my computer. It will remove the app Icon on the xbox app but the files and assets are still inside the windowsapps folder.

Cannot remove downloaded data from WindowsApps folder after removing a game from my PC