🚀 Force Reinstallation of an Intune App

 

– When Intune refuses to reinstall a program you’ve already removed

Sometimes an application deployed through Microsoft Intune won’t reinstall even after you’ve manually uninstalled it.
That’s because Intune tracks installation status using both registry entries and detection rules to decide whether an app is already present.

Here’s how to fully reset that state and force a reinstallation — step by step.

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💡 Why Intune won’t reinstall the app

When a Win32 app is deployed via Intune, the Intune Management Extension stores app metadata in the Windows registry under:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\IntuneManagementExtension\Win32Apps

This registry data tells Intune which apps are installed, when, and by which user.
On every policy sync, Intune checks the detection rule defined for the app.

If the detection rule still reports the app as “installed” — even though you removed it — Intune will skip reinstallation.

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🔧 Step-by-Step Guide

1️⃣ Uninstall the App

First, manually uninstall the program from the device:
Settings → Apps → Uninstall
or
Control Panel → Programs and Features

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2️⃣ Find the Application ID

1. Go to the Intune admin center
   👉 https://intune.microsoft.com

2. Navigate to:
   Apps → Windows apps

   
   
   

3. Click the app you want to reinstall.

4. In the browser address bar, the last 36 characters of the URL are the Application ID (GUID).

   
   
   

📘 Example:
https://intune.microsoft.com/#view/Microsoft_IntuneDeviceSettings/AppsWindowsMenu/.../0f220e92-49fe-221321-9484-2323213
➡️ Application ID: 0f220e92-49fe-42e9-221321-9484-2323213

Write it down.

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3️⃣ Find the User’s Object ID

1. Go to the Entra admin center
   👉 https://entra.microsoft.com

2. Navigate to Users → [Select the user]

3. Copy the Object ID from the user’s profile page.

   
   
   

You’ll need this to locate the correct registry key.

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4️⃣ Open the Registry Editor

On the target device:

1. Press Win + R

2. Type regedit and press Enter

3. Go to:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\IntuneManagementExtension\Win32Apps
   

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5️⃣ Locate the User’s Profile

Under Win32Apps, you’ll see a subkey for each user who has signed in.
Each one is labeled with the user’s Object ID.
Open the folder that matches your user’s Object ID.

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6️⃣ Identify the App Keys

Inside the user’s Object ID key, you’ll find:

• A key named GRS

• One or more subkeys for installed applications, for example:

  0f220e92-49fe-42e9-9484-8328dccbe129_1
  

🔢 The suffix shows how many times the app has been installed:
_1 = first installation, _2 = second, _3 = third, etc.

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7️⃣ Match the Correct GRS Entry

1. Expand the GRS key.

2. Open each subkey and check the right-hand pane for a value containing your Application ID.

3. Once found, that’s the GRS entry linked to your app.

   
   
   
   
   

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8️⃣ Delete Cached Entries

Delete the following two keys:

• The GRS subkey that contains the Application ID

• The application key (e.g., 0f220e92-49fe-42e9-9484-8328dccbe129_1) under the user’s Object ID

💥 This clears Intune’s local record of the installation.

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🔁 10️⃣ Force Sync

To trigger reinstallation:

1. Log out and back in, or

2. Run the following commands in PowerShell:

   intunemanagementextension.exe -sync
   

   (You can also check device registration status using dsregcmd /status.)

After syncing, Intune will detect that the app is missing and automatically reinstall it.

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🧩 Summary

Step	Action	Tool
1	Uninstall the app	Windows
2	Get Application ID	Intune Admin Center
3	Get Object ID	Entra Admin Center
4	Open registry	regedit
5	Find user’s Object ID	Win32Apps
6	Locate app entry	Compare IDs
7	Delete GRS + app keys	Registry
8	Clean detection rule	Intune
9	Sync Intune policies	PowerShell / GUI
10	App reinstalls automatically	🎉