Here is a new issue an owner of a small business in Oxford came to me with – on his brand new DELL Latitude laptop (running Windows 11 Pro) he couldn’t install Microsoft Teams that he just downloaded from Microsoft. The installer would start and then immediately fail with the following error:
This app package is not supported for installation by App Installer because it uses certain restricted capabilities.
As usual, the error message gave very few clues. After a bit of digging, I found that the issue was caused by an outdated version of the Windows 11 “App Installer” component which is used to install such “modern” .msix packages (MSTeams-x64.msix). Normally, App Installer is updated automatically by Windows, but since this was a brand new laptop, it hasn’t had a chance to do this yet.
To update the App Installer manually, open the Microsoft Store app, click on “Library” icon in the bottom left, find the “App Installer” in the list and click “Update“.
If you can’t see the update option, click “Get updates” in the top right. After the update, Teams installer “welcome screen” looked somewhat different and the installation was completed without any issues.
Published: January 2024