Hey everyone
I can't believe I'm the only one having this problem, so I thought I'd ask here.
I'm havint this relatively well documented problem of installing a game from the Windows Store, uninstalling it, but the space not being reclaimed from the C: drive.
The space is taken up in the C:/Program Files/WindowsApps folder, and on my machine at the moment that's running at about 200GB.
There is a workaround which involves taking ownership of the folder so you can give yourself delete permissions and manually delete the files, but this doesn't work on the Shadow PC, because they seem to restrict your ability to make these changes.
I reached out to Shadow support, and they suggested resetting my Shadow PC, but that isn't really going to work. This is a consistent issue with the Windows Store, so if we reset then we're just going to have the problem as soon as I install and uninstall a game again. I know this for certain because I had the problem before... my Shadow PC was reset for unrelated reasons, and I'm having the problem again.
Plus, I had to reinstall everything and lost some savegames in the process, so that's not really an option.
There's nothing in the help center about this issue that I can find.
From a Shadow point of view the issue is not being able to change permissions on a protected folder, which I assume is a symptom of the way you guys configure access rights on your machines.
When you try to access the folder you get a message telling you that you don't have permission to do so.
So, you go to the security tab, and try to change the permissions per this solution (https://www.windowscentral.com/how-delete-windowsapps-folder-windows-10) which talks about how to workaround the Windows Store issue.
The security settings should allow me, with local admin privileges, so set the owner of the folder or change my permissions... but all of these settings are greyed out.
There is also an interesting notification when you view the access control entry for the local shadow user on that WindowsApps folder... It says I have read/list access to the folder, which doesn't seem to be the case, but it also says that the access control entry for the current user is corrupt
I don't know why it would say this, but this is a very recently reset Shadow PC which I haven't done anything on but install software, so again I assume this is a product of the non-standard configuration.
So... all of this adds up to the face that I'm running out of room on my C: drive, and I can't reclaim it.
Since my primary use case is to play games on my Shadow PC (and a lot of people I imagine) then I need to be able to workaround this Microsoft issue until they fix it by using the same solution as everyone else, but permissions configuration issues specific to Shadow seem to be preventing me.
Anyone else having this problem? It seems to me that at the current price a Shadow PC and a Microsoft XBOX Game Pass for PC is a perfect pairing to pick up all those games that I don't get because I do a lot of my gaming on a PlayStation. I can't believe I'm alone in that, so I imagine I'm not the only one hitting this.
Anyone found a solution or know what I'm talking about?
Any help or advice appreciated.
Thanks
Jess
Best answer by toarScar
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