SOLVED: How to Disable the STORE App in Windows 10

May 20th 2016 UPDATE: We have a solution to disabling the STORE in Windows 10 Pro using a Group Policy Object . To avoid confusion I started a new post HERE.

JANUARY 28 2016 UPDATE: I have found this GPO to cause the STORE to fail to download apps but it does not block the store outright like it did in Windows 8.   “Roy” in Microsoft Partner Support, worked with the Windows Dev Team to find out that this policy only works on Windows 10 ENTERPRISE and intentionally does not work on Windows 10 Pro.

We are working on finding a solution that does not involve deleting (or renaming) the Store app in every profile.  In case you want to do that the path to the Windows 10 Store is C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.WindowsStore_8wekyb3d8bbwe\

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In Windows 8 you could disable the Microsoft STORE app using the Local Group Policy editor:

1. click START, type GPEDIT.MSC and press the Enter key
2. Expand USER CONFIGURATION > ADMINISTRATIVE TEMPLATES > WINDOWS COMPONENTS > STORE
3. Set TURN OFF THE STORE APPLICATION

You can use the above path to disable the Windows STORE in Windows 10 if you are on a corporate network with a Windows Domain Controller, using your Active Directory GROUP POLICY assuming you have loaded the Windows 10 ADMX template (click to download directly from Microsoft)

However the STORE key does not exist in Windows 10 LOCAL Group Policy, sooo you need to edit the registry manually:

1. Click START, type REGEDIT.EXE and press ENTER Key
2. Expand KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\WindowsStore
3. Right click and select NEW > REG_DWORD
4. Name it RemoveWindowsStore
5. Set the value to 1
6. Reboot the PC and notice that the store is locked