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The Configuration registry database is corrupt

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This post is about an error that happened to an Desktop Bridge application that was published on Microsoft Store.

The following error was happening for machines with the Windows 10 build higher than 17763.55 and I could reproduce the issue in a machine with the version 1809.

 

The Configuration registry database is corrupt

It was happening because the App package had a file called user.dat in the root of the package that was causing the failure.

In this particular case, the user.dat file inside the package wasn't a Windows Registry file but a database file. This error started to happen after the launching of MSIX, that now has the User.dat and Userclass.dat files to capture the registry keys. Since the developer's user.dat file was not registry keys, Windows throw that error message informing that the registry is corrupt.

The reason the package works on the 1803 build of Windows is that Windows didn’t look for the existence of that user.dat file in 1803 – that check is a new feature (MSIX).

More details about the user.dat used by MSIX at:
Customize your Enterprise apps with Modification Package MSIX documentation

 

I hope that it helps.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    November 01, 2018
    Thanks for documenting this Luis! I found that if I converted with MSIX Packaging tool, then run the app with 'Ádd-AppxPackage -Register .\AppxManifest.xml, this updates the .dat files. If you then package the app to an MSIX, you will see this error at runtime after installing. However, if you use the .dat files unmodifed and use them in the package, the error does not occur.
    • Anonymous
      November 01, 2018
      Thank you Mike! :)