I recently had an issue of not being able to access Windows Store, after I made some changes to my user profile, which is I renamed my user account profile folder, since a user’s profile folder is automatically named by Windows by default, it will not always be named what you may have wanted its name to be.

After I made the changes, I tried to switch to a Local Account from Microsoft Account and encountered error 0x80070002. I went ahead to fix error 0x80070002. Then tried switching back to Microsoft Account from the local account and received a prompt that an app in the Store is needed to perform that action, then I’m redirected to the Store where I now get the error 0x80131500.

In my attempt to resolve this issue, I did the following;

• Executed sfc/scannow command. The process completed, found errors and fixed them but I was still unable to to access Store.
• Next, I executed this command powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register $Env:SystemRoot\WinStore\AppxManifest.xml in Powershell environment to re-register the Store app. The result showed that Winstore was missing.
• I now proceeded to try other troubleshoooting steps found here, which included creating a new user account.

Creating a new user account worked, though I was unable to create the new user account within the corrupt user profile. When I try receive that same prompt that an app in the Store is needed to perform that action. To get past this, I had to enable the built-in Administrator account to create the new account.

However, with the new account, since it’s a local account/profile, I can only copy my files from the corrupt user profile folder into the new user account and not the settings and some apps installed on that corrupted user profile/account. I didn’t want to go all over again reconfiguring the settings on the new account.

So, how did I fix the corrupt user profile while retaining my files and settings and at the same time be able to access Store.

I downloaded the latest Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft and performed an in-place upgrade repair. This process simply replaced all corrupt files on the current install with their original files from the ISO, without necessarily completely reinstalling the OS, which will fix the issue by the way, but that defeats my main objective.

 

Image Credit: winhelponline.com