[W8.1 Update 1] "Windows Store failed to sync machine licenses. Result code 0x80070490"

I started following this thread earlier this month while trying to troubleshoot my laptop's failure to sync desktop settings with my desktop. I've since resolved it, but I'd been getting the Windows store error on my desktop so it caught my eye. While trying to troubleshoot the sync issue, the MS account troubleshooter gave me a warning indicating that my local system had not been properly registered. In the cloud, I assume.

Towards the end of last month I was getting warnings that a certificate on my machine was going to or had expired. I tracked the thumbprint down to a certificate issued as a token signing public key to my machine (it won't show up in IE or certmgr) named

001800009A2D612D.devicedns.live.com that's never been on the laptop.

Someone mentioned a couple of pages back that the last sync time in their registry was 3/11/2014? So is mine. That was patch Tuesday in March. The cert was issued with the same date and time stamp. Attempting to renew gives  the error "The request contains no certificate template information" which according to this thread and many others occurs when the issuing enterprise CA in AD denies you access or is not responding to DNS query. devicedns.live.com resolves to windowslivevoice.com [65.55.206.154] but it does not respond to any pings so it's essentially offline. 0x80070490 is also the error Windows Update can give when it has corruption, and I've seen it pop up when it cannot connect to the update server. I've since removed the certificate from my desktop but I still get the store error on both machines. I wonder if something similar is happening when the Windows Store tries to sync our app licenses and check for updates in the cloud the way my desktop settings couldn't?

I have no idea what windowslivevoice.com is or why a domain token certificate would be on my home desktop, but it was there, and it wasn't answering my desktop tried to phone home. I looks like MS introduced something in a patch earlier this year or changed something on their end (such as DNS records) that is causing these issues.

Since the problem is still present,

 further searches in store-client-UI/Microsoft-Windows-Store/Operational & appdata show that

 1- the windows store package cache is the source of the problem

 2- microsoft windows store cache is updated Ok

 3- It may happen that the windows store package cache file is updated properly (once in a blue moon)

 4- a similar error occured at least once for another item in this cache, and the root cause was there was a section of file still mapped.

so I don't think this is a file protection or any kind of security problem, but only a programmatic issue.

the cache error is in cache.cpp (2213) and the updated discovery time is set to 0

BR,

• gg

Really don't need to go through powershell etc. to get there. The Task Scheduler is available in the Control Panel > System and Security > Administrative Tools.

Changing the group for this task to System has worked for me too and I don't think there are any problematic side effects but then again I don't use the Windows Store or have any Apps installed. People can also simply disable this task if they don't use the Store or any of its features.

As far Microsoft is concerned I doubt we get an official response here, they may or may not fix it in the next Updates.

Best regards

Seems to work for me except step 1 (I have no START in my Windows 8.1 ) but since you are not from Microsoft I hope I have not caused myself any other unintended consequences.   Why has no Microsoft person agreed with you (at least so far??) as to your diagnosis of this problem?  You do seem to make sense.

I did it this way and the error messages stopped:

Right mouse click on my Command Prompt icon on my desktop.

Click 'Run as Administrator'.

Enter: Powershell

Enter: taskschd.msc

In left pane position to folder level: Task Scheduler (Local)\Task Scheduler Library\Microsoft\Windows\WS

In the right pane, right-click the WSRefreshBannedAppsListTask task and then click Properties.

In the WSRefreshBannedAppsListTask Properties window, click Change User or Group…

In the Select User or Group window, enter “Local Service” in the “Enter the object name to select” text box and then click OK.

In the WSRefreshBannedAppsListTask Properties window, click OK and OK.

Exit taskschd

Enter Exit to exit powershell

Enter Exit to exit command prompt

Could you please check if the following registry value is updated when the task is run as SYSTEM:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Store\SyncMachineLicenses\LastSyncTime?

It is possible that the task might require to be run as a user. Please note that it requires user to be logged in to run (so user profile is loaded). This is probably needed to get the information which Apps were downloaded/bought by the user for license check. If the task runs as SYSTEM, it may not detect any Apps as nothing was downloaded from Windows Store as SYSTEM. As such the task may just gracefully exit without any information.

This is just my guess, so I may very well be wrong here.

Either way, I believe the best way to go would be to check Windows 8.0 system or Windows 8.1 without Update (KB2919355) to see how the task was setup there - something I cannot do at the moment.