I'm not sure where to put this topic. Jay feel free to move this if necessary.

I am running Windows 10 Pro 21H1 - Build 19043.1288 on both my machines. My main computer is Windows 11 compliant and the other isn't. I had to restore the compliant computer via System Image over the weekend. Everything went smoothly until after the restore and not right away, I lost many apps from my directory. These disappeared apps include the News, Weather, Twitter, FB Messenger, Dolby & DTS sound (which I found again), Pandora, iHeart Radio and the Microsoft Store. There are others that I'm not remembering right now. This hasn't happened on the computer that IS NOT Windows 11 compliant, at least not yet. Has anyone else experienced this where the apps are just gone from the system? Is there a way to get them back? I did read that some apps were going away due to incompatibility but I thought that wouldn't happen until Windows 11 was installed. I also thought I would be told what apps were going away and that I would have options. Some of these apps were purchased from the store. This basically sucks if MS did this arbitrarily. Everyone thanks for your help with this.

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Terry

It just goes to show you, it's always something. If it's not one thing it's another!
_Rosanne Rosannadanna

It appears that the Restore didn't go very well, unfortunately. What was the reason for the Restore?

The missing apps can be recovered by opening the Windows Store and going to your Library of Apps, but with the Windows Store itself missing, that's certainly an issue. Here's a few ways to try and recover the Windows Store app:
https://thegeekpage.com/fix-windows-store-missing-in-windows-10/

-steve

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

All this was self inflicted. I tried to go out of the UEFI mode to install a driver for my Samsung SSD NVMe drive that the instructions say won't install in UEFI mode. Needless to say that didn't work. Once I left UEFI I think the boot managers on both bootable drives (one was a backup) became corrupted. Like I said it was me trying to be too cute and I created all this extra headache. LoL

Thanks for the link. I bookmarked it. I've got the Microsoft Store back. There is feature in this app I didn't see before. In the left column there are categories you can select that direct you to specific locations; like "All Owned" and "Installed" apps. I'm now reinstalling them. What a relief!

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Terry

It just goes to show you, it's always something. If it's not one thing it's another!
_Rosanne Rosannadanna

Excellent on being able to get the Store back. Hopefully your apps will all reinstall without issue.

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

I had done a Bing Search prior to reading your reply. I found this page and tried the Power Shell W/Adm rights. It worked as described. I have them both bookmarked for future reference. Steve thanks again for your help.

https://windowsloop.com/reinstall-windows-store/

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Terry

It just goes to show you, it's always something. If it's not one thing it's another!
_Rosanne Rosannadanna

My pleasure and glad to read that it is resolved.

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

Just for info your initial problem was caused by switching out of UEFI mode in the BIOS. UEFI and legacy BIOS require different sets of drivers which is what probably what caused your issue. When you opted out of UEFI you made the different installed drivers that control your hard drives no longer valid. This made the system no longer able to access your boot drive to load Windows.

If you ever want to do this again set the system to reboot in Safe Mode. Make the switch then boot to Safe Mode. Safe mode will poll the system to see what is actually needed and will install the needed generic drivers according to whether UEFI (in the BIOS it may just say EFI) or Legacy which would probably equate to IDE.

Bottom line is that booting in Safe Mode brings in the needed drivers for the mode being used. From my experience you only need to do this once as, once done for each mode, the needed drivers will have been made workable. After this you can switch between drive modes without issue.

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Jay thanks for that information. I'll check into that down the line, maybe when Windows 11 is ready to install.

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Terry

It just goes to show you, it's always something. If it's not one thing it's another!
_Rosanne Rosannadanna

Keep in mind that the Windows 11 installer would want UEFI.

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Jay I actually don't need the drivers because they are functioning perfectly. I was trying to install the Samsung OEM 970 driver. This would enable their software Samsung Magician to read the state of the SSD.

This leads me to another question. How often should we make a Windows Repair Disk? Would the repair disk fix this issue by loading the correct drivers at start up? Okay that's two questions.

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Terry

It just goes to show you, it's always something. If it's not one thing it's another!
_Rosanne Rosannadanna

By repair disk I assume that which can be made through Windows. I see no reason to ever make more than one except to have a spare just in case one goes bad. Would such a disk fix the issue that you had? I suppose that it is possible that it could in the same manner as booting to Safe Mode.

What I meant by drivers was that UEFI and Legacy (or whatever your BIOS calls it ) modes use different drivers for the drives. Safe Mode will install the proper drivers for which mode you are in. If you started with UEFI you only have UEFI drivers installed. Try boot in Legacy mode and there are no drivers for your drive so it can't boot. Booting to Safe Mode once in each mode should solve this. As a warning I should add that it has been quite a few years since I did this so I can't guarantee that it is the same today but would be surprised if it were not.

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I did a little more research this morning trying to find out if I disable "Raid Mode" and "NAND/Storage Remapping" and can I still boot into UFEI mode. These are the two conditions or factors that prohibit the Samsung NVMe driver from loading. Samsung instructions below.

Samsung System Configuration:
Windows Operating System shall successfully load the driver only when the Samsung NVMe SSD 970 PRO, 970 EVO, 970 EVO Plus, 960 PRO, 960 EVO or 950 EVOis installed to

• PCIe slot directly connected to the CPU or
• M.2 or PCIe slot connected to PCH

However, in the PCH case, Windows OS cannot load the driver under the following BIOS configurations where

• PCH Storage Configuration is set to Raid Mode or
• NAND/Storage Remapping option is enabled

I did a search and found this Microsoft document Boot to UEFI Mode or legacy BIOS mode and using a Command Window "As Administrator" I ran the command prompt:
"reg query HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control /v PEFirmwareType" without the quotes.
0x1 BIOS
0x2 UEFI

This was the result in the Command Window:
ERROR: The system was unable to find the specified registry key or value.

This concerns me! Why wouldn't the key be there to tell me what mode I'm in? Can or should I create the key manually? The computer boots and runs normally...I think so anyway about the 'running' part.

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Terry

It just goes to show you, it's always something. If it's not one thing it's another!
_Rosanne Rosannadanna

It is rather common to have to create such registry keys but, if things seem fine, I would not bother. It is easier, and safer, to just look in the BIOS.

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Yes you can use UEFI without RAID mode and remapping off. You only want them enabled if you are setting up multiple M.2 drives into a RAID setting. When the RAID stuff is enabled the system uses the built in raid controller to controller to control the drives that's why the Samsung driver can't be installed.

I ran into the same issue with my Intel M.2 drives, when in RAID mode none of the Intel software monitoring stuff I use would work.

Thank you for answer that part of my question. Currently I have three 10TB drives striped together for a 27TB capacity. Will I still have access to these drives/ that volume?

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Terry

It just goes to show you, it's always something. If it's not one thing it's another!
_Rosanne Rosannadanna

It depends, how was the stripe created? If is was created at the BIOS level then you must keep RAID mode on but probably don't need the remapping as it sounds like your stripe is with regular drives and not the M.2 drive.

I just want to thank you guys for adding a bit of knowledge to my feeble mind.

I've never actually used a RAID array and thought that drives had to be in matched pairs. I never knew that you could 'chain' three drives in a striped array.

When I got my second M.2 drive I almost set up a mirrored array but decided to use the second for manually done clone backups instead. My decision to not mirror the drives was based on security to a large extent. I figured that, if mirrored, and an infection got through, both drives would be compromised. With not doing an array, manual clones instead, I figured that it would help isolate and protect the clone backup. Further I used Disk Management to set the clone destination as off-line to further protect.

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That's what I did at first with my M.2 drives had to exact ones and set up a mirror, it took a little doing to get it up and running but it worked pretty good. Only problem I had is that in a RAID format, I couldn't use any of the Intel tools to check/optimize the drives. So I went back to a non-RAID setup as I back up my stuff every week anyways and I could you my drive tools like normal.

I just figure that doing manual clones is a safer way to go than mirroring the drives. Basically does the same thing as to redundancy without the threat of an infection affecting both drives. Since the clone backup drive is set as off-line it seems safer to me than a mirror.

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