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 fix was a combination of two of these answers -

1. Renew the developer license (How to get a developer license in Windows 8)
2. And deleting the build directories (though I deleted more then the screenshot depicted) Delete the Build directories

Answer 2

I was getting the exact same error. In my case the culprit was a NuGet package. It had added an app.config file to the project and it was confusing VS. I removed the app.config file and it solved my issue.

I got the solution at Iris Classon's site.

Answer 3

This error generally comes when you try to deploy in debug mode.

I would suggest, deploy the app first in release mode and then try in debug mode.

This worked for me.

Answer 4

Because of Two things i resolved this issue.

1. Basically, we just need to delete the bin\Debug and bld\Debug folders in our projects. Those contents will be regenerated by Visual Studio when you rebuild project.

2. Just Restart the Visual Studio. And Clean Build and Rebuild the solution and RUN it.

Hope this helps.,

Answer 5

This gift was courtesy of Microsoft's automatic updates for VS2015 which was one of the 2 culprits:

KB3022398 KB3165756

It also broke SourceTree and other apps that draw the GUI - making an outline of the app but not drawing the contents.