Nothing installed under "WindowsApps" folder will load.

styxxje · March 9

Recently ran into a problem where anything I have installed under the directory "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\" does not load. There's usually a few things that happen when I try to load it, and it usually varies after I've restarted my PC. Sometimes, the apps load for half a second and instantly close, other times I get an "access denied" error, and other times it's usually a random error. I've attempted to fix these in a few ways, mainly updating drivers and Windows, and I even tried upgrading to Windows 11 from Windows 10 to no avail. I've tried running a few CMD commands (which if I'm being honest, I have no idea what they were), but still nothing. Last thing, and the weirdest part imo, is that it's slowly been effecting more programs as time's gone by. First, it was general Windows programs like Media Player and Photos, then the Microsoft Store, and now even things like NVIDIA Control Panel, which are all installed under the WindowsApp directory. I should clarify that all of this started after I had built my new PC and cloned my Windows copy from my old hard drive to my M.2 SSD, but this only started happening until a bit AFTER I had gone through that process.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

m9x3mos · March 10

18 hours ago, styxxje said:

Recently ran into a problem where anything I have installed under the directory "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\" does not load. There's usually a few things that happen when I try to load it, and it usually varies after I've restarted my PC. Sometimes, the apps load for half a second and instantly close, other times I get an "access denied" error, and other times it's usually a random error. I've attempted to fix these in a few ways, mainly updating drivers and Windows, and I even tried upgrading to Windows 11 from Windows 10 to no avail. I've tried running a few CMD commands (which if I'm being honest, I have no idea what they were), but still nothing. Last thing, and the weirdest part imo, is that it's slowly been effecting more programs as time's gone by. First, it was general Windows programs like Media Player and Photos, then the Microsoft Store, and now even things like NVIDIA Control Panel, which are all installed under the WindowsApp directory. I should clarify that all of this started after I had built my new PC and cloned my Windows copy from my old hard drive to my M.2 SSD, but this only started happening until a bit AFTER I had gone through that process.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

That is a system protected folder that I don't think normally you aren't allowed to access.

I tried in the past to backup a game but it seems as soon as I touched that folder everything broke.

I ended up needing to install a fresh copy of windows to fix it.