I encountered another “already defined as the target namespace” error when updating the ADMX central store for Windows 10 v1511. The previous encounter came when updating the central store for Windows 10. That error was the result of Microsoft renaming the LocationProviderADM.admx file from Windows 8 to Microsoft-Windows-Geolocation-WLPAdm.admx in Windows 10.
Apparently, Microsoft has again changed the name of an ADMX template from Windows 10 to Windows 10 v1511. WinStoreUI.admx was renamed to WindowsStore.admx This time, when updating the Group Policy ADMX files from the latest download, I received the error:
Administrative Templates
Namespace ‘Microsoft.Policies.WindowsStore’ is already defined as the target namespace for another file in the store.
File \domain.fqdnSysVoldomain.fqdnPoliciesPolicyDefinitionsWinStoreUI.admx, line 4, column 80
Where the previous incident was well documented with KB3077013, I did not find a similar KB article. Instead, I was able to match it parallel to this issue and come up with my own resolution/workaround.
Method 1
You can ignore the error by clicking OK but I prefer to keep things clean and resolved on a central service like AD/Group Policy.
Method 2
- Delete WinStoreUI.admx and WinStoreUI.adml (under the language folder like ‘en-us’)
- Rename WindowsStore.admx to WinStoreUI.admx
- Rename WindowsStore.adml to WinStoreUI.adml
The differences between the two files are also more significant this time with changes to the supported line but also strings describing disabling the OS upgrade options for users and computers. For that reason, it’s important to get the newer file while renaming the files allows any old settings to remain. If you were not using the previous settings, you can resolve the issue with only step 1 of the second method.
After following Method 2, you should be able to edit Group Policies without encountering the Namespace warning. You can find the Store settings under both Computer Configuration and User Configuration under PoliciesWindows ComponentsStore.