I recently tried installing a package with winget, which is included with Windows 11. Like, out of the box. Imagine my surprise when I see this:

winget: The term 'winget' is not recognized as a name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or executable program.
Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.

Now I realize I’m running an Insider flight of Windows 11 on ARM, so things can get wonky. I search around for a bit and stumble across a possible fix: enable the app execution alias for winget.exe. Easy enough.

App Execution Aliases Screenshot

Ok, well, it’s already enabled. So I toggle it off and on, then try again:

Program 'winget' failed to run: The specified executable is not a valid application for this OS platform.

Oh, cool. That’s even better. Somehow Windows thinks the alias it just regenerated points to an x86 or x86_64 binary of winget somewhere? How does that even happen on an ARM machine?

Fine. I’ll grab the most recent version from the official Github repo.

Cannot open app package

Mmm. Yes. This is going well.

After banging my head against this for another 30 minutes, I try this:

PS C:\Users\push> Get-AppxPackage -Name Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller

RunspaceId             : cb00f285-bf1d-4d66-bf3c-4b7c8a6e1dca
Name                   : Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller
Publisher              : CN=Microsoft Corporation, O=Microsoft Corporation, L=Redmond, S=Washington, C=US
PublisherId            : 8wekyb3d8bbwe
Architecture           : Arm64
ResourceId             :
Version                : 1.17.11601.0
PackageFamilyName      : Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller_8wekyb3d8bbwe
PackageFullName        : Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller_1.17.11601.0_arm64__8wekyb3d8bbwe
InstallLocation        : C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller_1.17.11601.0_arm64__8wekyb3d8bbwe
IsFramework            : False
PackageUserInformation : {}
IsResourcePackage      : False
IsBundle               : False
IsDevelopmentMode      : False
NonRemovable           : True
Dependencies           : {Microsoft.UI.Xaml.2.7_7.2203.17001.0_arm64__8wekyb3d8bbwe,
                         Microsoft.VCLibs.140.00.UWPDesktop_14.0.30704.0_arm64__8wekyb3d8bbwe,
                         Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller_1.17.11601.0_neutral_split.scale-100_8wekyb3d8bbwe,
                         Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller_1.17.11601.0_neutral_split.scale-150_8wekyb3d8bbwe}
IsPartiallyStaged      : False
SignatureKind          : Store
Status                 : Ok

It’s there! Right there! Why aren’t you working?!

What can I do with this package I can’t remove or update? What other AppxPackage commands are there?

…Reset?

PS C:\Users\push> Get-AppxPackage -Name Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller | Reset-AppxPackage
PS C:\Users\push> winget --version
v1.2.11601

Sweet. Problem solved!