One of the main novelties of Windows 10 has been the universal platform, UWP. Thanks to it, Microsoft's operating system has finally been able to receive an application store similar to that of macOS. More and more developers are betting on this store to bring their programs to users, since it is much more convenient to download and update them. We can even find triple A games in this store, especially those from Microsoft studios.
Applications and games that are downloaded from the Microsoft store have their isolated space inside the hard drive. All files and all dependencies are copied into a folder. In this way the developer guarantees us the correct functioning of the program, regardless of the other programs that we have installed on the computer. In addition, when we uninstall the program or game in question, the entire contents of this folder are deleted. So our operating system is clean.
However, there is a folder related to the UWP platform that, by mistake, is taking up more account space for users. This folder is MSIXVC and may be occupying more than 70 GB of space on our hard drive.
MSIXVC saves UWP program installers, but does not remove them correctly
MSIXVC is the new format used by Microsoft to install programs and games that are downloaded from the Microsoft store itself. Although it is not mandatory to use it, several of the programs and games that we can find within this store do use it.
Gears of War , Metro Exodus or Forza 4 Horizon are some of the games that we can buy in the Microsoft Store and also make use of this type of installation. This means that, due to a random failure in Windows, this folder does not correctly delete the information that has been saved in it. And therefore, depending on the game or program that we have installed, we may be occupying up to 70 GB of hard disk space.
Microsoft Game Pass, the culprit of this problem
Although Microsoft has not made statements about this bug yet (and still exists in Windows 10 November 2019 Update ), everything indicates that the person responsible for it is Xbox Game Pass . This is the Microsoft subscription platform that, for 3.99 euros per month, allows us to download and play its more than 100 PC games.
When we download a Microsoft game through this program (which we remember, it is still in beta), sometimes it may happen that the game is installed correctly, but the installation data is not deleted. Therefore, these are stuck inside this folder and occupy dozens of gigabytes on our hard drive.
How to delete files from the MSIXVC folder to free up space
If we have tried to delete the secure folder we have realized that we cannot do it. Not even if we are administrators. This folder has the highest level of Windows privileges, SYSTEM, so only the operating system can use it or modify it. We can't even access your content.
If we want to free this space, the first thing we must try is to uninstall the game in question that has got stuck in this folder and then reinstall it. In this way, Windows may unlock the file and, after reinstalling the game, all this space will be freed.
This may work, or it may not. In addition, download and install 60 GB as well because it may not be a task of pleasure for many. Therefore, we are going to leave two more options that will help us solve the problem.
The first one is to use the TreeSize software , run as an administrator, to locate this folder and, from this program, delete the data. This program is completely free and we can download it from the following link .
In the event that in this way we can not, then the next step will be to restart Windows in Safe Mode, uninstall the game from there and, once uninstalled, we will have to change the permissions of the WindowsApps folder (and of all subfolders). Adding ourselves (or the administrator) as owners and with the highest level of privileges, then we can delete the folder and its contents without problems.
This way we can release the 70 GB of data that, due to this error, are taking up space on our hard drive.
Date update on 2019-11-15. Date published on 2019-11-15. Category: chrome Author: Oscar olg Fuente: softzone