KB5030211 was almost flawless until Microsoft force installed Windows Backup app on LTSC

The Patch Tuesday update, which is the monthly Windows security update, is known to often arrive with some issues or bugs. However, the latest one for September, KB5030211, had no known issues, and very few reported issues online or on the Feedback hub. Microsoft though has managed to ruin it as it has seemingly begun pushing the new Windows Backup app on Windows 10 Pro 22H2 and LTSC systems without the option to easily uninstall it.

The Patch Tuesday update brings this change unannounced as the release notes did not mention such a thing. The issue was brought to the attention by a Reddit user Esky013, who is presumably an IT administrator, on the Intune subreddit. They explained:

After applying the September CU for Windows 10 22H2 (KB5030211), there is a shiny new Start Menu shortcut for Windows Backup. It doesn't work in any of the environments we look after ("This feature is not supported by your organisation") due to policies applied, and we don't want or need it in the Start Menu. If it's not there it will save the questions from users, too.

It looks like it's part of the "Windows Feature Experience Pack" and as such the shortcut seems to be a bit "magic". There isn't anything in the usual %ProgramData% or %AppData% locations for Start Menu shortcuts, and it's not an appx package that I can remove.

The executable is "%windir%\SystemApps\MicrosoftWindows\.Client.CBS.cw5n1h2txyewy\WindowsBackupClient.exe".

And - no surprises here - there isn't a policy to hide this shortcut. We have The Intune Windows Spotlight policy set to completely blocked in some customers, "Block third party suggestions" and "Block consumer specific features" in others, and the Windows Backup shortcut still appears.

Another user on the thread managed to workaround the issue by removing the Windows feature Experience pack via the DISM (Deployment Image Servicing and Management)/Remove-Package command line option. They write:

I did remove this package on 2 systems and the Windows Backup icon was removed successfully from Windows 10 Pro 22H2 without breaking anything else here.

this is what I did:

dism /online /get-packages

Remove-WindowsPackage -Online -PackageName "Microsoft-Windows-UserExperience-Desktop-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.19041.3393"

For those who have not been following, Microsoft debuted the new Windows Backup app on the Dev channel earlier this year. The app later received improvements in a future build. While this was initially planned for Windows 11, it was also released on Windows 10 as well.

Source: Reddit

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