More travel and Windows Store App Visual Studio error: This app does not support the contract specified or is not installed

Tomorrow I have the exciting challenge of getting up at 3:30 AM, close to when I usually go to bed. I have also convinced myself that I will be able to code in the taxi sans nourriture (without food) during the 2h taxi ride to the airport. I have this irrational fear of sleeping in a cab, but I also get motion sickness from pretty much anything- so my commits will probably be rather interesting. Sweden is on my Saturday schedule, Norway Sunday-Tuesday, then back to UK. My NYE resolution is to spend more time with people I care about, and instead of waiting until the next year I’m starting now :)

On Saturday I’m visiting my best buddy Jonas- the happiest SharePoint developer you will ever meet :D Here we were in Tallinn at a garlic restaurant after a Nordic Testing Days conference. I ’love the ‘fun warp on my shoulder the panorama did haha :D #random (cropped pic)

Anyway, not a very exciting blog post but maybe something that might come in handy for people who experienced the same annoying error as I did when trying to run a Windows Store App locally from Visual Studio. I got this error on a fresh install of everything (OS, VS and so on) and found a soul on StackOverflow that also encountered this problem- so we tried to sort this out together. Here is my reply on SO, and not sure if it is a fix as the reason remains somewhat mysterious but it sorted out the problem for me.

Unable to activate Windows Store App. The activation failed with the error ‘This app does not support the contract specified or is not installed’.

See help for advice on how to get frustrated about lack of help when you troubleshoot the issue online. (Okay, I changed the text hehe)

Only Store Apps run from VS gave that error, other Store apps worked fine (some encountered this error when trying to run any Store app).

I first of all changed permissions on my WindowsApps folder under Program Files and made sure that I had full access to the folder and sub folders. Restarted the laptop, still no luck.
Then I set up an admin guest account (just something I tend to do for when I need to record tutorials- so not related to trying to solve the error). Out of curiosity I tried to create and run the same Windows Store App and got an error that another user had installed the app. Strange, how was it installed if it gave me the error that it couldn’t activate the app on the main account? Oh well, it seemed to be sorted with the above steps.

I logged back in as the main user and uninstalled the application (which was showing up as installed), and I can now run any Store App from VS without problems.

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Last modified on 2014-12-12