(re)Setting Settings in Windows 10

Further to my recent fun with Windows 10 – I started having an issue lately on my

Surface Studio where pressing the Settings button in the Start Menu failed to launch Setttings. The Settings menu was still accessible by pressing Start, then typing “Settings” or by launching it from the notifications tray, but why was the primary route not working?

It’s an issue I’ve experienced on a few other Surface devices periodically and up until now, I’ve not found a solution short of wiping and reinstalling Windows.

I recently came across the PowerShell “Get-AppXPackage” cmdlet which returns a list of every AppX app in the system’s manifest. With a quick loop you can reinstall every AppX Package (includes most Win 8 and newer system applications):

Get-AppXPackage | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}