Microsoft’s Windows 11 24H2 update includes a mandatory forced installation of Microsoft Teams. Aside from the fact that this may constitute anti-competitive behaviour, there seems to be no obvious way to recover all the disk space used by MS Teams.
Details
Upon installing the Windows 24H2 update, Microsoft Teams appears in the user’s Start Menu. Although it looks like the full app, it’s unclear if it’s just a stub. Clicking on the link opens a window that states that MS Teams just needs a moment to finish setting up. Either this is accurate, and MS Teams was really completely installed by the Windows 24H2 update, or it is deceptive and the bulk of MS Teams still needs to get downloaded. Given the length of time it took, I think it may be the latter, but I only tried it one time on a single box, so I cannot make an accurate assessment. Regardless, after a substantial delay, MS Teams will be fully installed, even if you cancel the MS Teams setup procedure.
At this point, the user can go to the Add/Remove Programs section of Windows Settings. There, the user can uninstall MS Teams. But this is where things get weird. Upon deleting MS Teams, only 3.9MB of storage space is freed. If you’re familiar with Microsoft code, you know that it is exceptionally unlikely that MS Teams only occupies 3.9MB of disk space.
The user can also use the same Add/Remove Programs section of Windows Settings to remove the newly installed Microsoft Teams plugin for Microsoft Office. Removing it frees up just 4MB of disk space. That’s plausible, although surprisingly low.
How does one free up all the disk space used by Microsoft Teams after it has been installed by the Windows 11 24H2 update?
