Using a 32 GB Surface

I managed to get my hands on a Surface, and was looking into ways to expand the memory using a 64 GB SD card.  There are quite a few suggestions on the web that you can mount the card into an empty folder, and then add these folders to various libraries.

This though doesn’t deal with how to install applications to another folder.

I found several references around the web, that suggests changing a registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Appx

I did this by changing the owner to my account from trusted installer, then afterward, set the owner back by using “NT SERVICE\TrustedInstaller”

However, this doesn’t behave exactly as you might expect, as any existing apps on your machine cannot be updated after this.  More interestingly, I found that I had multiple copies of apps like “Sport” installed on the machine, because they hadn’t all been updated.

So, I’ve now paved the surface, to try again from scratch, knowing what I do now.

After the pave

I created a single user with using a local account, and tried to uninstall the Travel and Sport Apps.  Much to my surprise the apps were still present on the disk.  So I went to the store to see my apps, but it insisted that I sign in with a live account, so I did.

I then decided to try to update just one of the apps (maps) to see what happened to the existing app.  What happens is that the update app is added to the system, but in addition, the old original version stays there.

So, it looks like there’s no way to remove these old versions.  I assume this is to allow users to create a new user, and still get the default apps.

It gets worse

I uninstalled all of the default apps (apart from internet explorer), and all of the pre-installed apps were still present.  So, I decided to see what windows update had in for me.

When I first got my hands on the surface, it informed me it needed a firmware update.  I was a little surprised that I needed to install this too, as I had assumed firmware was firmware.  Obviously a pave wipes absolutely everything, so I now have 21 updates to reinstall.

Fingers crossed.