How to fix “Unable to activate Windows Tailored application” on Win8

Question

I get "Unable to activate Windows Tailored application" error in Metro app when I'm running it under debugger of Visual Studio 11. I installed Windows 8 x64 Developer Preview on my Dell E6510 laptop.

I googled it and found out many people saying it happens when screen resolution is smaller than 800x600 but it's 1920x1280 in my case.

The app itself contains nothing. It's just empty wizard created application which is nothing but windows with black background.

Any ideas? It seems like very common issue.

Answer 1

The solution was quite bizarre but I figured it out.

It turns out not a single Metro application works under Administrator account including my apps. I'm talking about built-in Administrator account that is disabled by default (but which I enabled).

It gives "Access denied" error so I suspect it's somehow related to the way WinRT COM objects were registered or something like that. Go figure.

I hope somebody from Microsoft is reading this.

Answer 2

Best solution is to wait 2 weeks for the next release. The developer preview is full of fun bugs like this. I've seen this error caused by invalid app.xaml. Double check that you really haven't changed anything. I've also seen this error sometimes resolved by rebooting. Have fun!