How to Fix Missing Windows Default Apps in Windows 10 and Windows 11

Aseem Kishore
·
4 min read

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Laptop on a wooden desk shows a split-screen app mockup with left and right panels and colorful icons on the right panel of the screen.

Your built-in Windows apps, Mail, Calendar, the Microsoft Store, even Photos, disappeared from the Start menu after an update, upgrade, or reset. The package registration for those apps got corrupted, and Windows didn’t clean up after itself.

Fix #1: Repair or reset the individual app via Settings

Worth a look first if only one or two apps are broken; it’s the least disruptive option.

On Windows 11:

  1. Press Windows + I to open Settings.
  2. Click Apps, then Installed apps.
  3. Find the app, click the three-dot menu beside it, and choose Advanced options.
  4. Click Repair. If the app still misbehaves after reopening it, come back and click Reset.
Windows 11 Settings > Apps > Installed apps with an app's Advanced options panel open, showing Repair and Reset buttons

On Windows 10:

  1. Open Settings and go to Apps > Apps & features.
  2. Click the app, then click Advanced options.
  3. Click Repair first. If that doesn’t help, return and click Reset.
Windows 10 Settings > Apps > Apps & features with an app selected and its Advanced options panel open, showing Repair and Reset buttons

Repair refreshes the app’s files without touching your saved data. Reset wipes the app’s local data back to defaults, only go there if Repair fails.

Fix #2: Re-register all built-in apps via PowerShell

When several apps vanish at once, this is the command that actually works. It re-adds the package registrations for every built-in app without touching your files.

  1. Click Start, type powershell, right-click Windows PowerShell, and select Run as administrator.
Windows 11 Start menu search results showing Windows PowerShell with "Run as administrator" highlighted in the right-click context menu
  1. Paste the following and press Enter:
Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}
PowerShell admin window with the Get-AppXPackage re-registration command entered and output lines scrolling
  1. The command scrolls through every package. Red error lines are normal, they mean a package was already registered or skipped. Let it run to completion.
  2. Restart your PC.

If the Microsoft Store itself is the missing app, run this command first, then reopen the Store, and then run the full command above:

Get-AppxPackage -allusers Microsoft.WindowsStore | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}

Fix #3: Run the Start menu recovery command

If apps still show as installed in Settings but won’t appear in the Start menu, the culprit is shell cache or layout corruption, not missing packages. Microsoft added a targeted recovery tool for exactly this:

  1. Press Windows + R, type cmd, and press Ctrl + Shift + Enter to open Command Prompt as an administrator.
  2. Enter this command:
C:\Windows\System32\tdlrecover.exe -reregister -resetlayout -resetcache
  1. Restart your PC.

Nicely done by Microsoft. This resets only the Start menu’s cache and layout, leaving your apps and files completely alone.

Fix #4: Do an in-place repair install

When corruption is broad, with multiple system components acting up alongside the missing apps, an in-place repair install replaces corrupted Windows files while keeping your personal files, settings, and installed programs intact.

Back up anything irreplaceable to an external hard drive before you start.

On Windows 11:

  1. Download the Windows 11 Media Creation Tool from Microsoft’s download page.
  2. Run it, choose Create installation media, and save to a USB flash drive (8 GB minimum) or as an ISO file.
  3. Open the ISO (double-click to mount it) or the USB drive and run setup.exe.
  4. When prompted, choose Keep personal files and apps.
  5. Follow the prompts. Expect 30–60 minutes.

On Windows 10:

Download the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool, create the media, and run setup.exe with Keep personal files and apps selected. The process is the same.

Still on Windows 10?

Windows 10 reached end of support on October 14, 2025. These fixes still run on it, but since Microsoft no longer patches security bugs or system-level issues, missing apps on a Windows 10 machine can be a symptom of deeper, accumulating corruption. If your hardware supports Windows 11, upgrading to Windows 11 24H2 is the real long-term answer. The app package system there is more reliable, and you won’t keep chasing the same problems.

Conclusion

Fix #2, the PowerShell re-registration, resolves missing apps for most people, especially when several disappeared at the same time. Fix #3 is worth bookmarking separately: if the Start menu keeps dropping shortcuts after major updates, that command is a quick, targeted fix you’ll reach for again. If all four fixes fail, run a malware scan before anything else, as persistent corruption that resists repair is often a sign something more malicious is at work.