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I've made a right mess of this. So, I wanted to install mods into No Man's Sky, which I installed as part of the xbox game pass app. MS, in their infinite wisdom, have locked all editing of files in WindowsApps, so I tried to take ownership of the NMS game's folder. This kept reverting, so I took ownership of the WindowsApps folder. This gave me access to the folders, but has caused a litany of other problems...
Most of my installed games won't start - the only unaffected game is Forza Horizon 4. All others silently fail when I hit play. (the games that are failing are Grounded, Saints Row 4, No Man's Sky, and Rage 2).
If I try to open the related game folders in explorer, it gives an error stating the system cannot access this location.
So I tried uninstalling NMS through the app, and it said it was gone, but the folder remains and my free disk space has not changed. So I tried manually deleting the folder - it gave an access error, but when I clicked try again it went through the normal deletion process/progress bar display. The folder is now gone from explorer, but my free disk space has not changed.
I tried reinstalling NMS through the xbox app and it gives error code 0x80070057 and not much other info. Googling this error suggests a file system error.
So far the fixes I have tried are: SFC scan (no errors), chkdsk (no errors) DISM (no errors), malware scan (a couple of minor hits, but just the usual adware, now removed). I tried changing the ownership of WindowsApps folder to 'Everyone' and making sure it has full access rights, no effect. I tried changing my account to super-user, no effect.
I'm completely at a loss of what to try next. I think I've not only completely borked my xbox apps install, but have given myself a large amount of phantom data on my drive which I don't know how to erase.
I could really use some ideas of what to try next.
Also, could someone please tell me what the original ownership account is for the Program Files/WindowsApps folder - I can try changing it back to that if I can find what it is (I really should have written it down!).
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Did you solve this as I am having a similar problem and would out of curiosity like to know the results. Please. Thank you.
Sorry to say, I never did find a solution and gave up on it. Cancelled my xbox gaming subscription and returned to the reliable, non draconian, non user hating steam.
Hi oddgoat45
I am Dave, an Independent Advisor, I will help you with this . . .
Try this
Click your Start Button, then just type cmd
From the resulting list, right click Command Prompt and choose 'Run as Administrator'
Paste this into Command Prompt and hit Enter, then wait for that command to complete ...
icacls "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps" /reset /t /c /q
When that completes, close Command Prompt and restart your PC . . .
SYSTEM is the original owner
But for some reason when i first changed it to be me it was "trusted installer"
SYSTEM is the original owner
Also, could someone please tell me what the original ownership account is for the Program Files/WindowsApps folder - I can try changing it back to that if I can find what it is (I really should have written it down!).
