How to safely uninstall Minecraft Dungeons on Windows 10
Minecraft has various versions of the game that offer different structures to play in and somewhat varied storylines. One such version is Minecraft Dungeons and it has a bug where, if you uninstall the app, it will wipe your SSD or HDD. It’s not fun.
Minecraft Dungeons uninstall bug
The uninstall bug manifests when;
- You’ve installed Minecraft Dungeons to a custom directory.
- You attempt to uninstall the launcher from Control Panel>Programs>Uninstall a program.
- This only affects the Windows 7 and above version i.e. Java version of the app
- This only effects Minecraft Dungeons and no other version of the game.
Minecraft/Mojang is aware of the problem. You can read about the full issue here in the official bug report. They have released a patch to fix it.
Minecraft Dungeons uninstall bug (FIX)
The first fix you should try is the one from Mojang.
- Update the app by clicking the version dropdown. Select the new download that is available.
- Restart the launcher.
- Open the app and go to Settings > About.
- Check the Bootstrap version. If it is 166, or later, you can safely uninstall the app. If it is older than 166, DO NOT UNINSTALL the game. You have to update it to be able to remove the game safely.
What went wrong?
Uninstalling an app for a user is normally just a simple process of selecting it from a list and clicking an uninstall button. For apps that are uninstalling themselves, there is a lot of work that goes into it. It needs to delete all the files it added to your system and remove the directory structures that it created.
The app does this by looking in the install folder i.e., the folder you selected when installing the app. That is where it saves all its files, and those are the ones it deletes. These delete instructions are set in the app by the developer.
With Minecraft Dungeons, it seems that an assumption, a poor one, was made for users who install the app to a custom directory. The logic given to the app was to assume that the folder containing the game files had nothing else in it. It is ideal to always create a separate folder for every game that you install and that’s what led to the bug.
The uninstaller assumed that it could delete everything in the folder, which it did, thus wiping out entire SSDs or at least the partition/drive the game was installed on.
Conclusion
This bug is hardly two days old but a fix for it is out. If you know someone who plays the game but isn’t planning on playing it long term, give them a heads up to let them know they should update the game before uninstalling it.
