Microsoft Store and other apps such as Calc and Photos won't launch after Windows' update

After an update, Microsoft Store and several other apps such as Photos and Calculator stopped working. Clicking on them would open a window's frame for a split second, then immediately disappear without any error message.

I also noticed that in the pictures' properties, at the "Open with" line, Photos had been replaced by "TWINUI".

After a quick googling it appeared the problem was related to incoherences in the apps packages, however none of the guides I followed worked for me.

Another symptom was that the app's names weren't displayed in Windows' program list, instead they were shown as follow :

There are different suggestions that I found on the Internet, but none of them are relevant in my situation :

• sfc /scannow


• dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth



• In powershell : Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers |Where-Object {$.InstallLocation -like
  "*SystemApps*"} | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode
  -Register "$($.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}




• Downloading the migration tool from Microsoft's website and updating over the current installation



• Running Windows' problem diagnosis tools

Answer

Those symptoms were caused by the fact that the registered packages had a higher version than the packages actually available in "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps". (Such a bug in 2018, no comment ...)

To fix it, I had to manually uninstall the packages in Powershell, then install the versions available. You can follow this simple procedure if you are in the same situation :

1. Accessing WindowsApps : follow this guide to take ownership of "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps";

Note : I will take the calculator as example, you have to repeat the following procedure for every broken app. There might be an automated way to do it with a powershell script, but I don't know about it.

2. Find out the registered version of your broken app :
   
   
   
   • Open the console in admin mode and type "powershell" ;
   
   
   • Type Get-AppXPackage -Name "*calc*" (replace calc by what's relevant for you. The * is a regular expression meaning it can be replaced by anything) ;
   
   
   • In the results displayed, find out the PackageFullName line, and copy/paste this name in notepad so you don't lose it. If you don't find any folder with the same name in the WindowsApps folder, it means you have identified at least part of your problem ! In my case :
   
   

3. Find out the last available package : go in your WindowsApps folder, and find the folder with the last version of calculator (the one with "x64" in its name), in my case :

4. Unregister the broken version : back to the powershell, enter the command :

(Obviously replace the package name depending on your situation)

Remove-AppxPackage -Package "Microsoft.WindowsCalculator_10.1712.3351.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe"

5. Register the available package :

(The folder you found at step 3)

Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.WindowsCalculator_10.1706.2406.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\AppxManifest.xml"

6. Update the app : Simply launch Microsoft Store, click the "..." on the top right corner, then "Download and Update". Then click "Get update", and the store will update your app to their last version. Note that if the store itself is broken you can fix it the same way than I showed you with Calculator.

And if you didn't get any error message at this point, your problem should be fixed !