Windows 10: disable Xbox

I actually had to do this for my work computer (Windows 10 pro). I was experiencing a brief non-clickable popup window that closed itself but was still annoying on what is supposed to be a production machine.

I set about trying to find how to disable all things XBox on the system. I did a simply search on YouTube and somewhat unexpectedly across three videos I found three different solutions or more accurately three different places to disable a different part the XBox portion of the OS, with no over lap in the information.

I usually I document this sort of thing in a Google doc but since I have a blog I’ll post it here instead.

Here are the three methods with the three videos in no particular order. Most if not all of this seems to apply to the pro edition of Windows 10 and you will need local admin access for most if not all of these steps.

Let me again emphasize: this is to 100% entirely disable all XBox-related services in the system. Make sure you know how to undo it and you’re sure that is what you want BEFORE proceeding.

And in case it’s not clear enough: I don’t know if doing this will prevent playing Windows store purchased games (like Gears of War or the as of this writing yet to be released master chief collection of Halo) but I think it’s a pretty good likelihood such games will no longer work.

Windows 10 Improve FPS In Game Disabling Xbox DVR

The video didn’t say this but you may in fact need local admin access in order to make some or all of these changes.

This describes using the actual Windows UI – which can change in anyway without warning at any time – to disable the XBox DVR feature. With Windows 10 build 1809 the UI looks a little different from that in the video but it works the same: go into the start menu and “settings” then “Gaming”. From there you can toggle off the “gamebar”, try to disable broadcast-related things and disable “gamemode”.

The second part of the video involves going into the registry: navigate to

Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\System\GameConfigStore

and change the key GameDVR_Enabled to 0 (zero).

In text format this would be:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\System\GameConfigStore]
"GameDVR_Enabled"=dword:00000000

Note that this “HKEY_CURRENT_USER” registry “hive” – as the name implies – only applies to the current user e.g. the one currently logged in. In other words if you login to windows 10 as a different user name this setting will not be set.

Also in the registry at

 Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\

create a new key under Windows called GameDVR and under that a new DWORD value called AllowGameDVR with a value of 0 (zero).

In text format this would be it:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\GameDVR]
"AllowGameDVR"=dword:00000000

Unlike the prior registry modification, this entry is in local machine which means it applies system wide, regardless of what user is logged on to Windows. Also, there will not be that GameDVR section under “Windows” if that wasn’t clear. This has to be created manually. Just take it slow make sure you get it right.

How to Remove Xbox on Windows 10

This one involves opening a PowerShell prompt with local admin access and issuing the command:

Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.XboxApp | Remove-AppxPackage

That’s it. That’s the whole video. I like that’s quick and direct.

How To Turn Xbox Services On Or Off In Windows 10

This last video is about disabling the five XBox-related services:

• Bring up the services UI (search start for “services”, use run box to bring up “services.msc” or righ click start select “computer management”)
• I attempted to set all 5 of these services to “disabled”

The video suggests setting them all to “manual” but I would rather have them disabled. Probably not much of a difference given everything else I did to disable this stuff.

Or if you prefer command line instead:

net stop XboxGipSvc 
net stop xbgm 
net stop XblAuthManager
net stop XblGameSave
net stop XboxNetApiSvc

I should probably try this on my home PC to confirm what I really hate about these xbox services: popping up the xbox overlay in random games I don’t want.

At one point I had overlay popups for Steam, XBox and nVidia GeForce Experience. It was really annoying.