The Microsoft Maps app won’t launch

My Microsoft Maps app has stopped working. I ran a troubleshooter that indicates the Maps’ cache is corrupt. Please help!

[ ALAN ORRELL ]

Nick Odantzis replies: The Offline Maps cache is the culprit here, and there are three main areas you can investigate in order to try to resolve the problem: Settings, the cache folder and finally the Registry. Read on to find out how to investigate further.

Click ‘Start > Settings > System’ and then select ‘Offline maps’ from the left pane. If you’re able to, try clicking the ‘Delete all maps’ option or changing the storage location to see if that is able to resolve the problem with Maps. If that doesn’t work (or the ‘Offline maps’ page loading gets stuck), browse to the following folder and delete all of its contents:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\MapData\ diskcache\BundleStore. Try Maps again. With a little luck, it should work this time.

Still no joy? Press ‘Win-R’, type “regedit” and hit Enter. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_ MACHINE\SYSTEM\Maps. Look for a ‘Storage key’ — if it doesn’t exist, then right-click Maps and choose ‘New > Key’. Name it ‘Storage’ to create it.

If the key already exists, look for a MapsPreferredDeviceGuid value in the right pane. Right-click this and then choose Delete to remove it and reset the offline maps cache back to its default location on your C drive. The Maps app should now work correctly.