Fix Windows 8.1 Cannot Launch “PC Settings” or “Store” Problem

On my Windows 8.1 Desktop Computer, I have two user accounts.  One is connected to my “Microsoft Account” online. It was created when I installed Windows 8.1 on this PC. The other is a Windows domain user account. It was setup when I joined this PC to a local Windows domain.

In the “Microsoft Account”, I am able to run all “Metro Apps” or “Modern Apps”. I can go to “Microsoft Store”, etc. Everything seems to work fine.

But in the domain user account, there are all sorts of problems. In the “Action Center” of the control panel, I kept getting errors saying that I needed to enter a password to connect to a “Microsoft Account”. But when I clicked on “Enter Password”, the “PC Settings” app flashed on the screen, and nothing followed. An icon for “PC Settings” showed up on the task bar, but when I clicked on it, a gigantic “PC Settings”  icon flashed by, and still nothing happened. In the event log, I saw the following:

“Activation of app windows.immersivecontrolpanel_cw5n1h2txyewy!microsoft.windows.immersivecontrolpanel failed with error: This app does not support the contract specified or is not installed. See the Microsoft-Windows-TWinUI/Operational log for additional information.”

I searched online, and it turned out that this had to be fixed by running three powershell commands from an administrator command prompt:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register $Env:SystemRoot\camera\AppxManifest.xml

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register $Env:SystemRoot\FileManager\AppxManifest.xml

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register $Env:SystemRoot\ImmersiveControlPanel\AppxManifest.xml

The link is here:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-winapps/i-cant-open-any-windows-8-apps-including-pc/aaa88b5e-98c6-4958-a896-b991b924e4f0?rtAction=1407081231306

It turned out that this “Add-AppxPackage” command is a cure for the “Microsoft Store” problem as well:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register $Env:SystemRoot\WinStore\AppxManifest.xml

The link is here:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-windows_store/windows-81-store-stuck-on-load-loop/827ba1d0-d49b-4aae-87ef-70180b645e48

The Microsoft Store error in the event log looked like this:

“Activation of app winstore_cw5n1h2txyewy!Windows.Store failed with error: This app does not support the contract specified or is not installed. See the Microsoft-Windows-TWinUI/Operational log for additional information.”

Obviously this is not something that we outside of Microsoft could have figured out on our own.  But if this happens every time when a domain user is added to a Windows 8.1 machine, I wonder why Microsoft has not patched it.

Perhaps few in the corporate world care about the “Modern Apps” or the “Microsoft Store”. That cannot be good news for Microsoft. Then again Windows patches have been making my PC not bootable from time to time in the last few months. It seemed to have been caused by an “AMD WDDM1.3 driver update”, but I am not certain. Until I am certain, Windows auto update has to stay at “Off”.

The End of Load-Store Computing Is Coming

It is in the news that HP scientists is getting close to be able to produce devices based on memory resistors. One of them, Stan Williams, claims that we will see devices based on memory resistors working better than current NAND based devices in three years.

This is the beginning of a revolution. Besides the fact that memory resistors may potentially be used as more than just storage devices, fast static memory will change how computer software operate.

Currently, all application software, even including operating system and hardware drivers, follow a "load - execute - store" model. Data is loaded from permanent storage into RAM, processed, and then stored back to permanent storage. Faster static memory will make this model obsolete. A new model should be a "go to - execute" model. Nothing needs to be loaded. Software can execute exactly where it is stored because there will be no such thing as RAM anymore. Results need not be stored, because the results are already stored where they are in memory!

Because so much of our current software manage the load - store process of data, a new generation of software simply using "go to" without load/store will be needed to efficiently utilize the new hardware. All OS's, such as UNIX, LINUX, and Windows will all need to be re-written. After that, we will look back at the current "load - store" model software age as the "stone age".

Of course, some moving around of data will still be necessary from time to time, and data access to slow legacy storage will still need to follow the old model, at least partially. But that is different from the way things are now because to the new computers, connections to these devices will be treated almost like the way current computers handle phone dial-up modem connections. These devices can be "memory-mapped", but they are essentially "shadowed" with local static memory. So the loading process become a "shadowing process".