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[Bug Report] - Errors when running tweaks on stable 26.09.29: PowerShell 7 failures and "already removed" error noise

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#5,142 12 comments 2 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
powershell
Domain
tooling

Research direction

Start by locating WPFTweaksDeleteTempFiles and the handlers for Widget, Windows AI, Disable BitLocker, Telemetry, Remove OneDrive, and Remove Edge; compare the PowerShell 7 and 5.1 behavior using the reported environment and tweak list. The report also describes an explorer restart failure and startup UI errors, so first separate reproducible failures from harmless already-absent-item errors; done means the confirmed failures are resolved and expected absent-item cases no longer produce misleading errors.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

bug
I have read the known issues
  • Yes, I did
Version of WinUtil

26.09.29

What part of WinUtil are you having issues with?

Tweaks Tab

Description of the issue

Environment:

  • WinUtil: stable 26.09.29 (same on dev)
  • Windows 11 Home Single Language, 26H2, build 26300.9550
  • PowerShell 7.6.6 and Windows PowerShell 5.1 (both tested)
  • Launched with: irm https://christitus.com/win | iex in an admin terminal
  • Microsoft Store is installed. Edge and OneDrive were already removed.

Tweaks ticked (22, DNS set to Google):
Restore Point, Activity History, Consumer Features, WPBT, Location,
Telemetry, Delivery Optimization, Delete Temp Files, End Task on Taskbar,
Revert Start Menu, Widget, Remove OneDrive, Windows AI, Right Click Menu,
Disable BitLocker, Disk Cleanup, Prevent Device Metadata From Network,
Hibernation, Disable Background Apps, UTC Time, Remove Edge, Teredo.
"Services - Set to Manual" was left unticked (see #5139).

A. Fails in PowerShell 7 only (works in 5.1)

  1. Widget, Windows AI and Disable BitLocker fail:
    "The 'Get-AppxPackage' command was found in the module 'Appx', but the
    module could not be loaded... Could not find a part of the path
    'C:\Users...\AppData\Local\Temp\remoteIpMoProxy_...format.ps1xml'"
    (same message for 'Disable-BitLocker' in the 'BitLocker' module).
    In 5.1 the same tweaks report "Removed widgets" and "Windows AI Disabled".
    Guess, not confirmed: in PS7 these modules load through the Windows
    PowerShell compatibility layer, and WPFTweaksDeleteTempFiles runs before
    them and may delete the proxy files.

  2. explorer.exe stops and does not restart after running tweaks. I have to
    start it from Task Manager (File > Run new task). In 5.1 it restarts by
    itself (twice during the run). Cause unknown. Running only
    "Remove OneDrive" in PS7 did not reproduce it.

B. Harmless errors when the target is already gone (both PS 7 and 5.1)
These don't break anything, but they show red in the log. Checking
whether the item exists first would make logs cleaner.

  • Telemetry: Service 'wermgr' was not found
  • Telemetry: Property PeriodInNanoSeconds does not exist at
    HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Siuf\Rules
  • Remove OneDrive: icacls "First parameter must be a file name pattern"
    ($Env:OneDrive is empty), and "Cannot find a process with the name
    FileCoAuth"
  • Remove Edge: Cannot find path 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application'
  • Disable BitLocker: "BitLocker Drive Encryption is not enabled on this
    drive" (0x80310008)

C. Startup UI errors (low priority)
On launch my log shows many "Background queue 'InstallAppRender':
Exception setting "Source"... COM object that has been separated from
its underlying RCW cannot be used" for app favicons.

List of Applied Tweaks
Image Image
Paste the full error output (if available) or Screenshot or Video.
Image Image

error.txt

Dominant language
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