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Reposting since I didn't realize that I couldn't add an event log dump, so I've removed the offending bit (that was my bad).
I'm having some really weird issues with my Windows 11 laptop. The short version is this: I'd been having some issues with performance and, since I was getting Code Integrity warnings about keyman.dll being blocked (for those who are unfamiliar, Keyman is a keyboard layout switcher that I use for writing in either EuroLatin—ä, ɵ, ò, û, ñ, etc.—or IPA), so I assumed that Code Integrity and memory scanning might be the issue. Disabling it in the Settings didn't have any effect—it still displayed as enabled when I opened the System Information dialog—so I tried uninstalling the Virtual Machine Platform feature from the Windows Features dialog.
This apparently royally broke my Windows system, though it didn't seem obvious at first. The next time I opened File Explorer, it froze and had to be force-closed. This behaviour persisted, along with several errors in Event Viewer about Windows Search Service crashing because "The file exists". After some digging with the assistance of Hussen from live support and Derrick on the Microsoft Answers forum (link here), it seems like the issue was the ACLs of the C:\Program Files\WindowsApps directory getting corrupted.
After File Explorer was fixed, things seemed fine for a bit until the Start Menu stopped working. I dug into that, and it seems like rebooting into Active Directory Repair mode with msconfig fixed it, but I don't want to assume that that fixed everything, especially since I'm still getting a lot of RPC and other errors in the Event Viewer, including:
RPC call to function WLIDCreateContext returned the following error code: 0x8004800C.The miniport logged an event.Error 0x80070002 occurred while verifying known folder {c4900540-2379-4c75-844b-64e6faf8716b} with path ...I also had to run the Repair feature from the Apps settings for the Microsoft Store, Calculator, and Notepad apps, because they couldn't start and were raising Deployment Register issues in the Event logs.
So, my question is this: what steps should I take to finish repairing my installation? Ideally, I'd like to do so without having to re-install the ~380 GB of applications that are already installed on my computer, so unless we've exhausted literally all of our options, I don't want to do anything like a PC reset.
Steps I've already taken/tried include:
C:\Program Files\WindowsApps directory with takeown and resetting the ACLs with iacls.C:\Program Files directory with takeown and resetting the ACLs with iacls.C:\Program Files directory to the Administrators group with takeown and using iacls to reset their permissions.![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(35.2, 9%, 13%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EWL%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Hello
If an in-place upgrade reapir won't fix the corrupted system files, I am afraid perform a clean installation is the only option.
I'm not sure if there are, but I want to understand specific ways that I can perform an in-depth diagnostic to assess the problem, and find which files need to be repaired. Especially since most of the issues were repaired.
Have you encountered these RPC call, miniport, or 0x80070002 errors before? And if not, could you direct me to someone who has, so I can better address this issue?
(Please disregard any duplicate comments, the site was having some issues with submitting the comment)
I feel I should clarify, I want to find a way to perform a diagnostic first, and assess which files, if any, are corrupted, and to pinpoint exactly which files/registry entries/etc. are causing the errors I noted above.
Have you encountered any of the errors (RPC call to function WLIDCreateContext..., The miniport logged an event., and Error 0x80070002 occurred while verifying known folder...) before, or do you know specifically what error(s) they could indicate? If not, could you please direct me to someone who could?
Have you tried the "Fix problems using Windows Update" in Settings/System/Recovery?
My laptop is 22H2 [Version 10.0.22621.3296].
I'm not seeing that as an option, all I see is this:
Does Windows Update work? Can you install any updates?
It says I'm up-to-date.
It says I'm up-to-date.
For your reference, I am running Win11 22H2, version 10.0.22621.3447 and I see these updates. I've highlighted the cumulative ones. If you have these installed, then great. Otherwise you might want to run the Windows Update troubleshooter and see if that fixes WU.
Are the Defender updates getting installed?
If you've reset the permissions/ownership on C:\Program Files\WindowsApps, then I would think that all bets are off as to what's going to work or fail in the future. In my bag of tricks, I have a Powershell script that analyzes the permissions on a folder structure and generates the icacls commands that would allow me to restore them. (To save me from co-workers who do dumb things, mainly on data folders.)
I see a number of security principles being referenced and if you've removed them, then I have no way to know the impact of that.
I would think that an upgrade repair is your best bet to recover your current OS. Looking over the other post that you referenced, you've already tried that. That indicates to me that something that you have installed, like this keyman.dll, is interfering with the OS. That fits with your comment of "explorer works if I boot into safe mode". I'd suggest uninstalling that software and any other 3rd party software that might hook into the OS at a low level. Then try the upgrade/repair again with the latest ISO download.
If that doesn't fix it, then back up your data files to an external drive and install a fresh copy of Windows. There is no way that we forum users can know what your PC is doing.
The curious thing for me is that Keyman itself is running perfectly fine, and the errors I'm getting with pop-ups aren't related to it—they have to do with the CrossDevice process, and I'm getting those WLID issues as well.
And I appreciate that, as I'm an internet rando, there's not much you can know what my computer is doing. My hope in posting here, as directed by MS Support, was to get further official Microsoft support, to help walk me through the process of solving the issue—with so many people using Windows, I hope that Microsoft would design it robustly enough that these things can be repaired without requiring a mass reset, or having tech support just default to "just reset it" instead of figuring out why it's causing the issue.
And I hope I don't come across as angry at anyone here, I realize there might be some salt in the previous sentence—I'm not angry or upset at any of the forum-goers, just frustrated with the design philosophy of "well, if the user has problems, just tell them to fix it". Like a blacksmith saying, "well, I don't know how to fix your horseshoe, you'll just have to melt it down and have it reforged". So I'm hoping that I can at least try to get to someone who's got the technical familiarity to help me figure out how to properly diagnose what exactly is going on.
I guess that I'll start by saying that Windows allows flexibility so that users and software developers can hook into the OS enough to implement their own functionality to accomplish some task. But that flexibility has a price. Users are free to corrupt the heck out of the OS. And while "sfc /scannow" can detect OS programs that have been overwritten, there is no equivalent "sfc /scan-registry" to validate the thousands of registry entries that may or may not have been changed. Or "sfc /check-perms" to verify that permissions are set correctly across the file system.
From my experience, this site works best when a user can post some command/script/code/instructions where we can go and recreate their problem on one of our pc's and figure out how to fix it. You've got the classic "needle in the haystack" problem. We don't know what's been installed, uninstalled, or what registry changes you or some program has made.
Looking at the "Steps I've already taken/tried" list, you may have made your situation worse. By resetting the ownership and ACL's on C:\Program Files, your pc is now in some unknown kind of state. I know that TrustedInstaller should be the owner of many of those files, so I would not be surprised if you have install problems in the future.
I don't know of an easy way to fix that other than a repair/reinstall. You can wait and see if anyone else replies with a better idea.