Any way to repair or diagnose Storage Service (StorSvc)?

It's been a month. I'm going to go ahead and bump this thread, because there is vanishingly little information to be found online concerning the Storage Service service, and I find that to be a little ridiculous. I am asking Microsoft on Microsoft forums about a Microsoft product. The people responsible for developing the software should be able to answer questions about it.

I understand this is a community forum and not a direct line to the Microsoft devs - but this, as far as I know, is the closest thing to that an end-user has available. This is where questions about Windows should find answers.

Hello there louthelou,

As you I'm fed up with this problem, been fighting with it since Windows 10. It is exactly as you say, somehow storage service is affecting taskbar and disabling it is no option since it interferes with xbox apps. Now I don't have the perfect solution and I'm no expert but today during my research (saw you other posts in multiple sites) I've developed a workaround. It consists of creating a batch file (.bat) capable of changing the StorSvc status from Disabled to Demand(manual), fire it up and change the status again back to Disabled, and executing this batch file from a scheduled task which triggers 20 seconds after a user login on the pc. (this suits my pc, you may change it to suit your needs)

All this under my theory that storage service starts too early if you let it automatically start.

First of all you should set StorSvc to disabled as you previously did.

Next step is to create the batch file, for this I recommend you right click on desktop and create a new text file and set the extension to .bat (name it something like StorSvcStart.bat)

Open up the file in a text editor and copy the following: (ignore de dashed lines of course)

@echo off

sc.exe config StorSvc start= demand

net start StorSvc

if ERRORLEVEL 1 goto error

sc.exe config StorSvc start= disabled

exit

:error

echo There was a problem

pause

and save it.

Now for anyone reading this, I don't know if this is the best way to do it but this is what I got, we should build upon this.

The reason why I change the start method to Demand and back to Disabled is because this service will cause trouble in ANY of the launch methods other that Disabled, but on Disabled you can't start it up from the batch file, so this status changes were necessary.

With this file done you should save it somewhere in your computer, I have it in Program Files in my main drive.

Next, we create the scheduled task in the Task Scheduler, open it up either by searching it or hitting win + r, and typing taskschd.msc

At the right side you want to click "create new task" (not the basic one).

Name it whatever you like, mine's called StartStorageService. Below in the security options it will depend if there are more users on your pc or not, if single user leave it as it is, if more users click the change user button, write "users" in the box and check for availability, it should adapt to your pc and hit accept, this way this task is going to work for every user, not only you.

Below check the first dot to launch the task at login and check the lowest box to grant admin rights to the task, otherwise it won't work, I also configured it for win 10 as there is no windows 11 option, but it works just fine.

Click on the next tab "Triggers". Here you will add a new one, then set the trigger to login at the dropdown, then choose any user. In advanced settings set the delay to something around 20 seconds (this works in my case, you may change it until it works for you), leave everything else disabled, and check the last box "enabled", and hit accept.

Click next tab "Actions", make a new one, choose start a program from dropdown, and select the batch file we previously created. Hit accept.

Lastly click on the "Settings" tab and set to active only "allow this task to run on demand", and "if the running task does not end at requested...", choose to not create new instances in the dropdown. Hit accept in the task properties. And now the task is created.

Now we are all set up, next time you login this task should fire up after the time you set, which in my case is enough for the task bar to flawlessly appear, then execute, and then open the xbox app perfectly.

Again, this is just a workaround I made and I'm no expert but it can prevent a lot of headaches.

Please give feedback if you find better solutions or have some upgrades in mind.

You know, it would be funny if all the problem is that Microsoft runs this service too early lol.

Best regards, Rob.

I should add that this question is directed to win 10, but all of this seems to be part of the same issues in win 11: same strange disk usage, same previous windows menus, same fixes, same desktop/taskbar issues. I updated to win 11 months ago trying to escape this problem just to find it is still there.

Can confirm high disk usage on start-up after restarting the PC, also this whole "the only Control Panel that can be accessed is the older one from Windows 7" stuff is so weird but yes it happens to me. In my case its like if windows 11 was running over windows 10 but it failed to "load the win 11 skin", trying to open any win 11 app like Settings or Display will result in an error. This seems related to the taskbar issue cause as soon as you fix it by any means (like restarting explorer.exe) everything works just fine.

Also wanted to say that I'm familiar with that workaround, i personally would recommend people to use it since i doubt it this issue will be solved in a long time

Let me start up by saying that i understand that this is a community forum and i can't just expect to find solutions to everything since the majority of answers come from people who don't work for Microsoft.

I, as much as you guys am frustrated at the fact that a system that is supposed to be the most compatible thing with windows, isn't. I have been experiencing this issue for about 3 years, the first time i ever experienced this was when the update 20H1 (i believed it was called) came out.

It use to be screen flickering but on updates subsequent to 20h2 it changed from flickering to a blank taskbar, while having a blank Taskbar any attempt to open Control panel will result on an error, the only Control Panel that can be accessed is the older one from Windows 7 through Task Manager.

I also noticed high disk usage on start-up after restarting my PC, if you read this can you confirm if that happens on your system as well?