1. I don't know what "Open Windows" means...explain.

2. Chrome is a browser and Bing is a search engine which could be used in any browser.

3. Are you using MS Office to create files which will be shared with others/and maybe changed or edited by others? If yes, consider keeping Office and paying for it. If no, download LibreOffice and forget all about MS Office.

https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/

I use free office. Just as good as MS office. Mary

https://www.freeoffice.com/en/

There are many alternatives and different people prefer different ones. Some of it depends upon the how much you need, use, or rely on Office's extensive capabilities.

If you're a power user and often produce or receive feature-rich files, you should take a look at powerful LibreOffice. If your files are less sophisticated and/or you tend to share files collaboratively, Google Docs might fill the bill.

There are other choices as well but these two seem to be among the most popular.

Thank you azinoh, Mary and Elmer.

azinoh, I meant free office. Sorry, slip of the tongue. I don't share files with others, and am a very light user. I'd never have bought Office to start with, as most of it is just wasted on me. Thanks for the link to LibreOffice.

Mary, thank you for the link to free Office.

Elmer, I'm as unsophisticated as they come. I've been using a computer for over 30 years now, but it was on a company system with a computer department that took care of everything technical. All I did was create texts right into an existing format. This is my first personal device. Thanks for the reference to Google Docs.

Is there a way to rid the laptop of XboxConsole companion? I managed to wipe off the shortcut icon, along with many other useless shortcut icons that cluttered the screen. I also deleted many of useless features (don't shoot me if it's not the right term) behind those irritating icons, but XboxConsole companion appears to be unkillable.

We were creating a document with Word, and sharing it with a group. The sharing was using Google drive, and we could only edit it using Google Docs. Unfortunately, much of the formatting was lost, including references, figures, etc. Because of this, I would never use Google Docs if I were sharing with other people.

mtvhike - thanks for the tip!

Richard, I'm familiar with the right click trick, and had already tried it without success. I'm not getting the uninstall option at all. I also got into settings and discovered that some features were uninstallable while others are not. XboxConsole companion is one of them. Could it be that your Xbox companion wasn't preinstalled? Also, thank you so much for taking the trouble of posting the photo for a clear visual guide :)

Windows 10 keeps nagging me for an update, which I don't really need, but to put an end to the nagging I started doing an update and got a message there wasn't enough free space for an update. That's why I cleared out whatever I could. It wasn't enough, though, and Xbox companion seems to take up a lot of space along with other features cluttering the device.

"Could it be that your Xbox companion wasn't preinstalled?"

Yes, you're probably right.

I have no idea why it wouldn't have an option to uninstall. Maybe something else is dependent on it and needs to be uninstalled first?

Are you familiar with ccleaner? I hate to recommend any PC cleaner but if any is safe and legit, that's probably the one. The only reason I mention it is that I "think" it now offers the ability to remove even the new Windows "modern apps". They offer a free version but when I did an update, they tried to trick me into installing... Avast? I think it was. It was easy enough to "decline?" but if I'd have been in a hurry, I'd have installed something I didn't want.

I was going to say that there's always the Powershell script method (I've used it a lot) but after doing a search, I see that's mentioned on MajorGeeks along with other methods: https://www.majorgeeks.com/content/page/how_to_uninstall_the_xbox_console_companion.html

"I started doing an update and got a message there wasn't enough free space for an update"

Although I don't run Windows full time, I do have it and it runs great. So I keep it backed up as a disk image. (using Macrium Reflect)

I did a bit of cleanup to make the images smaller. In addition to removing stuff I wasn't interested in, I did a disk cleanup, including system files. If I remember correctly, I think there was a large folder called "Windows.old" that was created before an upgrade. I believe disk cleanup allowed me to free up a few gigs by removing that folder and a few other things. You may or may not have that folder. My memory is not good and I'm too lazy to write things down but I think I remember having that problem once when I had plenty of free disk space. I don't remember how or if I solved it.

Do you use steam games? It is connected with that it seems. Is it not in the list where you uninstall programs.? Mary

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_(app)

Agree w/Richard that Ccleaner is a good program, but even I (pretty experienced) has to look very carefully at & think about what its menu-tabs are telling me & which boxes are checked or not before I "clean" something.

Thank you so much Richard, Mary and bengz! Never heard of steam games. Wiki was helpful :)

Bengz, thanks for the warning. I'm totally inexperienced, and was wondering how risky it might be.