Tag Archives: windows

Solution: Windows 10: Unable to start Appstore apps

Ok, I went ahead and upgraded to Windows 10. everything went smoothly, all my settings and installed apps preserved and work without a hitch. I am loving the interface and getting along with Cortana pretty good.

But after a while I encountered a weird issue: Appstore installed apps – e.g. Calendar, Mail etc. even Windows AppStore itself wouldn’t launch. I’d either get a cryptic error message, something along the lines “Application did not start, please contact system administrator” or very briefly a window would appear and immediately closed.

Looking into Event log was a bit more explanatory, but not too much: “Microsoft.WindowsStore_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App failed with error: Access is denied. See the Microsoft-Windows-TWinUI/Operational log for additional information.”

If you google it – you will find many possible explanations of the problem and many possible ways to solve it offered, but none of those worked for me. Finally I figured it out (and Event Log entry gave me a clue): C:\Program Files\WindowsApps folder was missing necessary permissions:

WindowsApps

Namely, “ALL APPLICATION PACKAGES” was missing read & execute permissions on that folder (had to to uncheck “Hide protected operating system files” in Control Panel, File Explorer options to be able to see it). Once I added correct permissions – appstore apps started launching with no problems.

Solution: Lenovo Thinkpad w540 black LCD screen (only external monitor works)

I spend ungodly amount of time trying to solve this issue, there were many similar issues reported on Lenovo forums, but no solutions and contacting Lenovo support is akin jumping thru hoops of fire.

The problem began after I plugged my brand new Thinkpad w540 into external monitor and set it to mode “Extended display (monitor + built-in screen). For a while everything worked fine, but then laptop own screen went black – and nothing could revive it. The external monitor worked fine and the maddening part was – when laptop booted – Lenovo logo appeared bright and shiny on laptop own screen, so I knew graphics card was OK. I ran full Lenovo System update, I updated NVidia drivers from Nvida site – nothing helped.

Then I tried to update Intel drivers for laptop’s HD Graphics 4600 card. Intel installer refused to install them because “The driver being installed is not validated for this computer“. To bypass that I

1. Unzipped the installer package into it’s own folder (you can use WinRar to unpack actual EXE or you can download Zip version of the package).
2. Went to Device Manager, right clicked on “HD Graphics 4600 card” driver and selected Update.
3. When prompted I selected “Browse my computer for driver software”
4. Selected “Let me pick from list of Device Drivers”
5. Clicked “Have disk” and browsed for an INF file inside of GRAPHICS folder of the unpacked driver files from Step 1

Installation commenced and lo and behold – laptop’s display sprang to life.

These instructions are specific to this laptop model and videocard, but I imagine they might be helpful in other similar situations. And hopefully Lenovo will take notice and finally update their drivers.

The value of the method attribute may not be html. Solution for the error.

If you get the following error while browsing a page in Internet Explorer:

The value of the ‘method’ attribute may not be ‘html’

chances are MSXML registration is corrupted on your machine. To fix this, open DOS prompt and type following commands:

regsvr32 msxml.dll
regsvr32 msxml2.dll
regsvr32 msxml3.dll

This will re-register MSXML and the error will go away.