Begone Windows Feedback

Microsoft don’t make it easy to disable Windows Feedback. There’s no way to do it using the Registry, and there’s no way to uninstall the application. Quite often, bumping Win+F on a Windows 10 machine will bring up the Feedback window, and it annoyingly takes screen shots in preparation for providing feedback to Microsoft. This can be bad when connected to customers sites, or reviewing confidential information as it temporarily stores an image on your computer of what’s on your primary monitor, and if you accidentally bump send, directly to Microsoft, where anyone could potentially view it.

Fortunately, while it cannot be elegantly disabled, with some Brute Force the Windows Feedback option can be removed.

You will need the Sysinternals PsTools Library found here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/pstools

Once PSTools is unpacked into the C:\Windows directory, from a command line, run the following:

PSEXEC -i -s cmd

This will open a new Command Prompt under the System user account. This is the Windows Equivalent of running a shell as root.

Next, you can use the RD command to remove the Windows Feedback application folders. This can be automagically performed with the following commands:

C:\
CD\Progra~1\WindowsApps\
for /f %i in (‘dir /a:d /s /b Microsoft.WindowsFeedback*’) do rd /s /q %i

This will search the local Windows AppStore folder for any versions of the Microsoft Windows Feedback application, and forcibly remove them. Once this is done, Bumping Win+F will no longer bring up the Feedback window.

Hooray.