Unable to Activate Windows Tailored Application

Posted Date: 17-Sep-2011	Category: Windows 8	Rating:
Author: Tony John	Member Level: Diamond	Points: 50

When using Visual Studio 11, are you getting the error "unable to Activate Windows Tailored Application"? Read my first experience developing Metro style Apps for Windows 8 using Visual Studio 11.

I have been playing with the Windows 8 developer preview last few days. Last night I decided to download Windows 8 Developer Preview with the developer tools. I created a new virtual machine on VMWare Workstation and installed the Windows 8 with developer tools.

The installation went smooth and it installed all necessary tools including Visual Studio 11 Express. My next step was to create a "Hello World" application using Visual Studio 11 Express. I opened Visual Studio and selected "Create New Aproject". I chose my favorite language "C#" and chose the project template "Metro Style Application".

Once the Visual Studio created the project for me, I simply pressed F5 expecting to see a sample Metro application running. Unfortunately, it spitted a runtime error on me:

Unable to Activate Windows Tailored Application.

Operation not supported. Unknown error: 0x80270232

Here is a screenshot of the same error:

A quick search on the internet did not show me much on this error, other than this thread where someone else have similar problems when using some advanced features. However, in case, it is just the default installation of Visual Studio Express 11 and default project template created by Visual Studio.

I am still investigating this project and will update more details and a solution to this problem as soon as I find anything more.

UPDATE: A member reported that changing the screen resolution would fix this problem. I have not yet verified it yet since I crashed development computer while attempting a system file modification!

UPDATE 2: I have seen several members reporting that changing screen resolution solved the issue, but at the same time few others reported changing the screen resolution did not solve the error "Unable to Activate Windows Tailored Application".

If you are running on a virtual environment, you may have limitations on the screen resolution.

It is concluded that this is a display driver related problem. Your video devices may drivers may have compatibility issues with Windows 8, even though Windows 8 supposed to be fully compatible with Windows 7 devices. Remember this is just a developer preview build.

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