Problem:

When I deploy a Windows Store application to the Simulator, Visual Studio Output shows “Deployment complete.” however the application never launches and the Simulator hangs forever showing the loading screen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

While Visual Studio displays “Starting the Simulator”

 

 

 

Then if I close the Simulator I get in Visual Studio this error: “Unable to start the Simulator. Cannot process request because the process (####) has exited.”

 

 

 

 

Or “Unable to start the Simulator. Simulator closed or crashed.”

 

 

 

 

I also noticed that even if I don’t deploy an application, but I launch the simulator directly from “C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows Simulator\11.0\Microsoft.Windows.Simulator.exe” the issue still happens.

And finally, if I deploy the application to the  Local Machine, the application runs just fine.

 

Possible Solutions:

I found in forums the following 2 solutions:

• Changing the following key in the registry to 1  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\fDenyChildConnections
• Updating NVIDIA drivers.

However none of the above worked for me.

Then I figured out what was causing the issue in my case.

 

Solution:

• I realized that having an open VPN connection to another network was causing the problem. So, just by closing the connection the problem got solved.

The issue and fix happens every time I open and close the VPN connection. However, I still would like to have a permanent solution without having to close the connection, so if anybody finds it please let me know.

Regards.