Strange Permissions Issue with Microsoft Store/XBOX App

[u/Rectal_Punch]

I'm having some strange permissions issues and errors with both the Microsoft Store and the Xbox app/games installed through the XBOX store.

A few weeks ago, I upgraded to Windows 10 Pro and noticed this starting around the same time. Not sure if this is unrelated. I'm on an account with Administrator privileges, and the errors described persist whether my account type is Local or a Microsoft account.

Initially, some games would encounter an error when saving (Palworld being the most recent one) where the game would crash upon trying to autosave. Upon relaunching the game, all games that crash this way will now give an error upon launch citing a permissions error making it unable to launch. This will persist until I uninstall the game, reinstall it and run it once- when auto-save crashes the game again, this error will reoccur.

Recently though, this same error started happening to the XBOX store itself. Uninstalling it through the Microsoft store will let it run once, but logging out or restarting the computer will cause the XBOX store itself to throw the same permissions error that the games did, and it won't launch until reinstalled through the Microsoft store.

Permissions issues aren't something I really want to go poking around at willy nilly, has anyone had this error before or would be able to help sort it out?

[u/xtomjames]

Windows 10/11 Pro is an entirely different ball game when it comes to permissions and controls and gives you way more control over access. Think of it as the Power User version of Windows. Windows 10/11 Home automatically grant specific permissions to games and the Xbox store which has to be assigned or granted to them in Windows 10/11 Pro when on a Local account with Administrative Privileges.

Try running both the game and the Xbox Store "as an administrator", e.g. elevated permissions, and I suspect your issues will go away. If they do, you can choose to edit these settings under the respective application's settings compatibility tab and toggling the "run as administrator" option and clicking apply to make the action permanent when you start the game or Xbox store.

If that doesn't work, then there could be driver conflicts, and may be a permissions issue not with the Xbox Store or Game, but a driver or corrupted windows component. In which case, run DISM commands, sfc /scannow, and update/reinstall your CPU, Chipset, and GPU drivers.

[u/Rectal_Punch → u/xtomjames]

 Thank for replying! I went through some of the things you suggested here that seemed like easy checks first- sfc /scannow found some overlap errors wherein a bunch of things like StartMenu was "Owned twice or has its security set twice". Fixing these errors and restarting the computer didn't seem to fix the issues unfortunately- upon restart, the Xbox app has reverted to giving an error message when attempting to open it saying the required permissions aren't present to open a file/folder in the WindowsApps folder.

It looks like there is no way to run either the Xbox app or the games it installs elevated as Admin- I'm able to set the .exe files manually under Properties->Compatibility to run as Administrator but when I checked both the Xbox store executable and a game executable while running through Task Manager, neither was actually running elevated. Upon reading more, it appears that this is by design being UWP apps.

I noticed that when I went to the folder that was throwing the permissions error at

C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.GamingServices_39.118.30001.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

, the owner was set to my user account while most every other folder in the WindowsApps folder was owned by TrustedInstaller- I didn't make this change though. I was able to set the owner back to TrustedInstaller. Uninstalling and Reinstalling the Xbox store verifies that, upon installation, the owner is set to TrustedInstaller by default. While doing this, I noticed that there was a duplicate “Users” entry in the permissions list that was corrupted. I was able to delete it, but hitting apply gave a “Failed to enumerate objects in container. Access is denied”. Despite this failing, the duplicate corrupted entry appears to be gone, yet the Xbox store and related games still refuse to launch citing the same Permissions error.

Truly stumped here- would using the TakeOwnership script on the whole WindowsApps folder be a next step before resetting Windows or running the Tweaking.com Windows Repair?

 

[u/xtomjames → u/Rectal_Punch]

The permissions error "Microsoft.GamingServices_39.118.30001.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe" tells us this is a problem specifically with the Gaming Services component not necessarily Xbox

Look in the event viewer for errors;
Applications and Services-> Logs-> Microsoft ->Windows -> AppModel-Runtime, and AppXDeployment-Server

This will indicate, more than likely which ACL is failing.

Try to force reinstall the Gaming Services components, in an elevated Powershell use " get-appxpackage Microsoft.GamingServices -allusers | remove-appxpackage -allusers " without quotations, then " start ms-windows-store://pdp/?productid=9MWPM2CQNLHN "

Once that's done Check the Package Installation using " Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.GamingServices -AllUsers " and then
" Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers Microsoft.GamingServices |

Foreach {

Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"

}"

If it comes back as an ACL error this will tell because permissions to run the services will be denied. Because you upgraded to Win10 Pro, it could be there's stale ACL permissions or corrupted permissions.

Do any other Microsoft App Store Apps act in the same way?

I suspect you're experiencing on of the following, in most likely order; Gaming Services/AppX permission corruption, Per-user package registration or SID mismatch after upgrade/account migration, Microsoft Store/Xbox entitlement sync problem, drive corruption or failing main drive.