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WU_E_UH_APPX_INVALID_PACKAGE_VOLUME
Meaning and context of WU_E_UH_APPX_INVALID_PACKAGE_VOLUME
AppX packages are applications installed on Windows, but the AppX (or MSIX) format is unique. It’s been designed as a container instead of the traditional MSI or EXE installers you might be used to. AppX has advantages, too, like being able to make your app available in the Microsoft Store, and having additional security, since the apps run as per user, instead of as per machine.
And this, cool as it is, appears to be where we run into problems.
Microsoft appears to enumerate all the AppX packages upon a new-user logon. Then, in an effort to facilitate a good user experience, each AppX package is evaluated for things like DefaultAssociations (e.g., http == MSEdge) and FileTypeAssociations (e.g., “.pdf” == MSEdge). To make this process faster, it seems Microsoft tries to operate this asynchronously. This is both good and bad. It’s good, because the whole phase operates super quickly. It’s bad because CPU contention from multiple threads can slow the whole process down.
The challenge with all this enumerating, associating, and configuring is that it is time-consuming. The more AppX packages you have, the longer it takes. Windows Registry operations are slow to begin with, and get slower the larger your hive.
I highlighted this problem here, and the impact is more severe when you account for Speculative Execution patches. Add to that, the more AppX packages you have, the longer it takes to read/modify the hive, and so on. And this process happens TWICE. Once during the “User Profile” phase, and then again during the “Preparing Windows” phase.
There is a definite lack of documentation on this whole process, so almost everything appears to be via user discovery (like this document).
The stress of work amid the COVID-19 pandemic is quite enough on its own, but these AppX difficulties aren’t making things any easier for people. I can hear the frustration in the voices of our customers—and honestly in my own—when I don’t have an answer for their logons being slow because of AppX Packages. These people are onboarding thousands of users a week and this logon performance is, to say the least, not helping.
Diagnostic interpretation of WU_E_UH_APPX_INVALID_PACKAGE_VOLUME
WU_E_UH_APPX_INVALID_PACKAGE_VOLUME has the HRESULT value 0x80242020. AllStat records the condition as “The specified volume is not a valid AppX package volume.”. For WU_E_UH_APPX_INVALID_PACKAGE_VOLUME, in practice, interpret that wording at the boundary owned by Windows Update client, servicing, or update-handler state, rather than treating the value as a generic Windows message.
Evidence to capture for WU_E_UH_APPX_INVALID_PACKAGE_VOLUME
- Record the exact COM method or Windows API, its input object, the calling thread, and the full 0x80242020 value before a wrapper converts it to an exception or Boolean result.
- Capture any IErrorInfo text, activity identifier, event-log entry, and subsystem trace that mentions WU_E_UH_APPX_INVALID_PACKAGE_VOLUME or the wu / uh / appx / package / volume operation.
- For WU_E_UH_APPX_INVALID_PACKAGE_VOLUME, compare the failing machine with a working one at the same configuration boundary: component version, policy, registration, identity, and target resource.
Retry and recovery for WU_E_UH_APPX_INVALID_PACKAGE_VOLUME
Retry WU_E_UH_APPX_INVALID_PACKAGE_VOLUME only when the owning API documents a transient state or after the condition described as “The specified volume is not a valid AppX package volume.” has changed. For WU_E_UH_APPX_INVALID_PACKAGE_VOLUME, configuration, policy, format, and authorization failures normally require correction first; an immediate loop can hide the original call site and add secondary errors.
Official references for WU_E_UH_APPX_INVALID_PACKAGE_VOLUME
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