Build 18945,18950,18956 Upgrade Deletes Store and Related Apps Upgrading from Release 18362.267 - RESOLVED Workarounds

edit: maybe the base VM 18362.267 is the one with missing or corrupted Store components hence the update failing only offline.

Hi Roger, trying everything I can think of, must be my stubbornness  :-)

The 18945 ISO did clean install correctly so we can rule that out. I did try another ISO with just Pro instead of the multi ISO so that rules out the ISO's.

Thought about the base vm, so I ran the upgrade offline in another vm with same result. It has never seen an Insider build. I am using 7vm's, and all of them have a Base snapshot offline. Went back to my Skippy vm, installed 18941 offline successfully so think this should rule out corruption on the base vm. Then installing 18945 from 18941 also worked offline.

Here's another pic of 18945 showing the result of upgrade from 18362. Apps were moved to "WindowsApps\DeletedAllUserPackages" without any replacements to the WindowsApps folder which is where I believe the issue lies.

Then I copied "Microsoft.WindowsStore_11811.1001.18.0_neutral_split.scale-125_8wekyb3d8bbwe" over to the WindowsApps folder. Ran "Get-Appxpackage –Allusers"

Then I ran:

Add-AppxPackage -register “C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.WindowsStore_11811.1001.18.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe” –DisableDevelopmentMode

No go. Next up was the command to install all apps:

Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers| Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}

No go with this either. Same as running the script you posted. Now this is getting even weirder.

Ran "Appsdiagnostic10.diagcab". It wanted to turn UAC back on and made me sign in with MS account. Did that, my wallpaper synced up, everything seemed normal. Result:

wow! that's pretty weird in deed, never seen that error before.

I'm out of ideas except have you ran a virus/malware scan just in case. Good luck!

After my conversation with Don, wondering what would happen if I copied the Store over from another system, I copied the entire Folder WindowsApps from 18945 from my double upgrade (18362-18941-18945) that did work offline from the exact same vm.

Had to take ownership of WindowsApps Folder and SubFolders in order to do this. There was about 1.7Gig of data. Well guess what, that worked.

Too much effort for a useful fix, so the question still remains, what is not occurring with 18945 from 18362.

There is something going on no doubt with the Store apps, as this is the first build this occurred, and this behavior was consistent. If I put 18362 online, upgrade all the Store apps, the install works perfectly, just not offline.

Totally Weird.

I think your second command should have worked, but the first could have been (you didn't specify the Appxmanifest.xml):

Add-AppxPackage -Path "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.WindowsStore_11811.1001.18.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\Appxmanifest.xml" -Register -DisableDevelopmentMode -ForceApplicationShutdown -Verbose

I usually add the -ForceApplicationShutdown in case anything is running that could prevent install.

The command would only work if all of the app files were in the specified folder and even then, I don't know if it would actually reinstall Store if Store is missing. My example below is from my 19H2, so slightly different version.

The command would only work if all of the app files were in the specified folder and even then, I don't know if it would actually reinstall Store if Store is missing. My example below is from my 19H2, so slightly different version.

This is the contents of my WindowsApps Folder going back to snapshot of just installing 18945. There be many missing files.

I then copied over "Microsoft.WindowsStore_11811.1001.18.0_neutral_split.scale-125_8wekyb3d8bbwe" from the DeletedAllUserPackages Folder and ran:

Add-AppxPackage -Path "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.WindowsStore_11811.1001.18.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\Appxmanifest.xml" -Register -DisableDevelopmentMode -ForceApplicationShutdown -Verbose

For comparison, these are all the files copied from working 18945 to the broken one that worked as soon as the copy completed. Quite a few missing files compared to the first pic. These of course were all updated so different version #'s.

Kudos! workarounds are great except that leave you wondering about the cause of the failure in the first place, just like the mystery of 18922 to 18936...

Thanks Roger, but this was just too much trouble for workaround. Much easier to put 18362 online and update Store.

Even easier to just upgrade to 18941 offline and then to 18945 offline. 

Easiest was total clean install, but that's not what we were testing.

Aren't mysteries great. lol

Worst part was not getting any confirmations. Makes it so much more difficult if you are the only one having this issue. Hopefully next build works better for me. I did save all the original logs just in case Jason would like the engineers to look through them,

Thanks to Don as these powershell and dism commands do have me confused. Slowly picking up on some, but mind forgets more than I learn. I just keep documenting them for future use.

Edit: Yes I did run a full system scan, also the offline scan and installed Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and everything come out clean. That was one of the ideas I checked as some of this almost appeared as if there was a virus. Even though 18362 was totally clean installed and never connected (Base snapshot).

Hi Roger,

I was thinking of what you mentioned about my base vm's possibly being corrupt. Then considered whether the last CU had anything to do with this.

Tried an upgrade on a 3rd vm base, 18362.239 with the same result. I checked out the WindowsApps folder before starting upgrade, there were 121 Folders inside. After the upgrade, this was reduced to 67 Folders.

Looks like this is where the issue lies. Why is this build removing the Store and Apps from this folder?

Think I will try downloading the UUP files and create an ISO with uup-converter-wimlib-30 instead of using their script. Not sure if this will make any difference, totally out of ideas. This would be the 3rd ISO.

Hi Johnny,

I don't think the ISO is the culprit, otherwise I would've experienced the same behavior updating offline using the same ISO you used from UUP.

I'm gonna try again using a VM.

edit: sorry, I can't even start a VM getting the infamous error despite following instructions to disable CG

I don't think the ISO is the culprit

Thanks for trying. Getting a confirmation would have been better. Hopefully I am not a lone wolf on this one as quite positive we covered everything. Same issue with the newer ISO as expected.

Decided to report this to FBH as it is quite consistent. I included a pic and zipped Log files for the engineers. Hope I can get Jason's attention on the other thread for 18945.

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