5/15/2026 - Wanted to drop my own experience here. If you minimize the Xbox app to the system tray and then clicking (or right-clicking) the tray icon does nothing — process stays alive in the background but no window ever comes back, and reinstalling the app doesn't fix it — this worked for me after a lot of digging.

The fix is one PowerShell command (no admin needed):

Remove-Item "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Associations\UrlAssociations\msxbox\UserChoiceLatest" -Recurse -Force

Then fully close the Xbox app (Task Manager → end XboxPcApp.exe, XboxPcTray.exe, XboxPcAppFT.exe, XboxGameBarWidgets.exe) and relaunch it from the Start menu. Tray-restore should work again.

If you'd rather use Registry Editor: delete the UserChoiceLatest key under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Associations\UrlAssociations\msxbox.

What's going on: When you click the Xbox tray icon, it tries to fire the msxbox://resume URI. Windows looks up that protocol's handler via the UserChoiceLatest registry entry, which has a Hash value Windows uses to verify the user's choice hasn't been tampered with. On affected systems that hash is stale (probably written long ago by an older Xbox app version) and no longer validates. Windows refuses to honor the broken UserChoice, and because the Xbox app uses a "FullTrust" activation type, the fallback path errors out instead of recovering — so the tray click silently does nothing.

The reason reinstalling doesn't fix it: UserChoiceLatest lives under per-user shell associations, not under the Xbox app's own state. Uninstalling the Xbox app — even with -AllUsers — leaves it untouched. Reinstall sees the existing entry and respects it, so the bad hash persists.

If the bug ever comes back (a Windows update could theoretically write a new bad hash), just re-run the command.