Unable to Activate Windows Store App

Question

I installed a retail version of Windows 8 Pro. I downloaded and installed Visual Studio Express 2012. I asked for and received a developers certificate. Then I tried to create a hello world app.

From there I get a "Unable to Activate Windows Store App" message box when I try to debug the app. Most commentary on the web says delete build directories. This didn't work for me

Does anyone have a solution for how to fix this and debug my app?

Answer 1

For me the problem was that I created the app on a TrueCrypt mounted virtual drive and when I moved the project files to a normal drive then everything worked just fine. Weird.

Answer 2

Increasing the revision number of the package worked for me

Answer 3

This happened to me once too, but the deleting build directories advice fixed it. I assume that this is only one project since it's a Hello World app; otherwise I would ask if you deleted build directories from all projects in your solution.

You can also try running "Clean Solution" from the BUILD menu in Visual Studio.

I'm sorry...it's horrible if this is happening on a clean install as you describe.

Answer 4

For me changing the Package Name in Package.appxmanifest fixed the problem

Answer 5

In my case, the C# UWP app had a native library which failed in the application startup code, and called exit(1). The symptoms were identical to those in the question, though. Visual Studio would throw a message:

Unable to activate Windows Store app '88888888-6666-5555-4444-111111111111_abcdefgh!App'. The Acme.exe process started, but the activation request failed with error 'Operation not supported. Unknown error: 0x80040905'.

In addition, there was a message in the UWP app Windows log under Microsoft\Windows\Apps\Microsoft-Windows-TWinUI/Operational: event ID 5961, message:

Activation for 88888888-6666-5555-4444-111111111111_abcdefgh!App failed. Error code: Unknown HResult Error code: 0x80040905. Activation phase: COM App activation

Internally, the C# part would try to construct a native class instance from the App constructor, the native class constructor would encounter an unrecoverable error and bail. From the UWP subsystem standpoint, and from the debugger standpoint, though, this looked as something distinct from the mere programmatic exit. I'll leave this answer here, 'cause I've spent some time chasing various UWP failure scenarios instead of running under a native debugger.

I've replaced the exit() call with throw ref new Exception(E_INVALIDARG). At least this way the error manifests in the managed debugger, and the message is descriptive.

Answer 6

I've been having this problem a lot with a UWP Windows 10 app on Visual Studio 2019...for me the reliable workaround is to bump the Build number in the Package.appxmanifest file (Packaging tab). It's a huge pain...really hope Microsoft will sort this out soon