Windows – How to add a previously removed provitioned app package in Windows 10 Enterprise

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In my company, we have customized a Windows 10 Enterprise (1903) image for deployment. during the image customization process, a bunch of Windows default apps were removed by using the remove-provisionedapppackage cmdlet and related functions. That worked great, we got a clean windows 10 Enterprise system for deployment.
The problem is that we want to add some of the removed apps to some of our already deployed machines and we have not been able to do so. More specifically, we need to add the microsoft.windowsstore app package to a few machines, but all we can find are references to installations where the app package being added is in the provisioned packages. In our case, we removed the windowsstore from the image when the image was created. Command like add-apppackage and add-provisionedapppackage fail, because they expect us to provide the actual package file, but I see no sane way of downloading that from Microsoft!

Please, tell me that I'm missing something and that I can actually add the removed app package again!

Thanks in advance and sorry if I'm posting this to the wrong site.

Best Answer

Alright, after some considerable searching and testing, I found what appears to be the correct answer to my own question (at least at this time). Here you go:

If you remove a built-in provisioned app from a Windows 10 Enterprise installation/image, you will need the appx bundle package to add it back. Microsoft provides a downloadable ISO via the VLSC (Volume License Center) that contains all of the Windows 10 enterprise provisioned apps. You can search for something like "Windows 10 Inbox Apps" or something like that to find it. Unfortunately, MS has not made the app bundles available via more normal/expected means, so people without access to the VLSC will have to figure out a way to get the appbundle that is more creative. In my case, we removed the Windows Store, so there was literally no way to get the app we needed. I was able to download the ISO and from the below from powershell:

  • In your ISO, cd to the amd64fre directory and run:

Add-ProvisionedAppPackage -online -PackagePath Microsoft.WindowsStore_8wekyb3d8bbwe.appxbundle -LicensePath Microsoft.WindowsStore_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml

That will install (provision) the Windows Store package back in your running system.

I hope this helps someone!

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