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I just installed Windows File Recovery from the Store.

I'm running build 19041.329

And when I click on it, and enter the admin password, I get the error in the title.

How do I fix this?

ispiro
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3 Answers3

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I'm guessing you're not logged in as an admin since you had to enter the admin password. The scenario is you're logged in as Joe, a regular user, and you have to use, for example, AdminJoe when doing administrative stuff. This happened to me.

You install the app as Joe and it ends up in C:\Users\Joe\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps.

You then try to use it and get switched to the admin account which looks for the file here: C:\Users\AdminJoe\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps, and doesn't find it.

Login as the admin user and install the app from the Store.

Note: Although this fixes the problem of not finding the application when running it from a non-admin account, the program still fails to run once you run it from a cmd window logged in as an Administrator. I get: The system cannot execute the specified program. I can use where.exe to show that it is there, but it fails to run. My guess is this is due to how Windows Store apps are "sandboxed". I've run procmon to see if I could isolate the error but nothing sticks out. Switching accounts and logging in as an Administrator allows me to run winfr.

Ray Megal
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  • In my case launching the app while logged in as admin worked without re-installing, because the previous installation from the non-admin account had resulted in the app being installed for the admin account as well. – dougwoodrow Dec 17 '20 at 13:42
  • Interesting point about the inability to run the "sandboxed" Windows apps from the command prompt though. Note that they also have a reported zero-byte file size, and there is also another WinFR.exe in a subdirectory called Microsoft.WindowsFileRecovery_8wek... – dougwoodrow Dec 17 '20 at 13:42
  • But are you saying that after re-installing while logged in as admin resulted in being able to launch it (with admin password) when logged in as a non-admin user? I tried re-installing while logged in as admin and it did not install it for the non-admin user. Possibly of note, the MS Store also forced me to login with a Microsoft account, whereas I had been able to skip the MS login when I installed as non-admin. – dougwoodrow Dec 17 '20 at 13:43
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On my computer it works, and it looks like winfr.exe is the actual file recovery app itself. It should be located in the following path after installation:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps

Scenario 1: If the file is in there, it sounds like you are missing the PATH variable that tells CMD to look in that folder for programs to run. Search the start menu for "Edit environment variables for your account" and click the result. It will bring up the "Environment Variables" window. Under 'User variables' (the top half), click to highlight "Path" and then click 'Edit'. Then in the new Window, check if you have an entry for the WindowsApps path listed above. If not, copy and paste that exact path, Click 'New' and paste it in there and hit OK. Now try the app again.

Scenario 2: The winfr.exe file is not in the directory above. Honestly not sure what to do here, it seems like it was just not installed correctly. Maybe check your other user profile directories and see if it was installed in the wrong place somehow?

Angstrom
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I had the same exact problem as you (not found error after installation). I eventually solved it by uninstalling the program then switching explicitly to the Administrator account and Installing it from the Microsoft Store while logged into my Administrator account.

Don
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  • This is the same solution as the accepted solution by Ray Megal. Also, for anyone else with this problem: it may not be necessary to uninstall the app. In my case, it had already been automatically installed for the administrator account, so the solution was simply to launch it while logged in as the admin user. – dougwoodrow Dec 17 '20 at 13:13