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Microsoft Store won't launch or is missing

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Symptom

Section titled “Symptom”

Microsoft Store does not open, closes immediately after launch, or shows a loading indicator indefinitely. Second variant: the Store app is not in the system at all — a search in the Start menu finds nothing, and installed Store apps do not update.

Typical causes

Section titled “Typical causes”
  • Services without which Store does not work are disabled: usually they were disabled by an “optimizer”, a tweak pack, or the user themselves following instructions from the internet.
  • The Microsoft Store package is corrupted after an update failure or deep system cleanup.
  • Store is absent from the Windows build itself: in LTSC and stripped images, Microsoft Store is not installed by default.

Fix in BoosterX

Section titled “Fix in BoosterX”

Open BoosterX → “Fixes” (in the left menu) → in the search, enter “Full Microsoft Store fix” → “Fix” → restart Windows. The fix checks and restores the disabled Microsoft Store, AppX, Windows Update, BITS and Delivery Optimization services.

If Store is not in the system — use the “Microsoft Store is missing” card: it restores the services and Windows Update, then reinstalls or re-registers Microsoft Store in the standard way. The card works even on LTSC and stripped builds, but on a heavily stripped image it may not succeed: if the required components have been removed from the image itself, Store cannot be installed.

BoosterX can be downloaded from the official website boosterx.org.

How to check

Section titled “How to check”

Launch Microsoft Store, open the “Library” page and update or install one small app.

Manual alternative without BoosterX

Section titled “Manual alternative without BoosterX”
  1. Press Win+R, enter wsreset.exe and press Enter: Windows will reset the Store cache — the window will be empty for a few seconds, then Store will open by itself.
  2. Open services.msc, find the AppXSvc, ClipSVC, wuauserv and BITS services, set the startup type to “Automatic” and start them.
  3. If Store has been removed from the build (LTSC and similar), it cannot be reinstalled using standard Windows tools — this is the case the “Microsoft Store is missing” card in BoosterX is for.

If it did not help

Section titled “If it did not help”

Collect the event log via EventX and contact support.

Last checked: 2026-09-20. Full catalog of fixes.