After reinstalling Minecraft Preview because the 1.21.120.21 update couldn’t load automatically from the Microsoft Store, the game crashes shortly after launch. Launching it from the desktop shortcut, the Microsoft Store, the Microsoft Launcher, or the Xbox app all have the same result. Reinstalling it multiple times, restarting the PC, signing out of my Microsoft account, or signing in with a different Microsoft account all didn’t work.
The official changelog states that with the new GDK version the game files are being moved to %APPDATA%\Minecraft Bedrock Preview, except for a few users that still use the UWP version. It seems that I’m one of those users that have the UWP version, as the data is still stored in the same directory as before (C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.MinecraftUWP_8wekyb3d8bbwe). The official changelog also mentioned that any issues related to this should be reported here, that’s why I made this report.
A reproduction of the crash:
Launch the game, either from the MS store, the Xbox app, the launcher, or the minecraft-preview:// shortcut.
The game will open with a new look that’s similar to how the Minecraft Launcher opened. The game is opened in a default (not full screen) window scale with the red Mojang Studios screen, and the bottom-right shows a loading animation with signing in progress shown. If not signed in, a Microsoft sign in popup opens and closes after signing in. This is where I took the screenshot from.
The smaller window closes and a maximized but not fullscreen window flashes white, and sometimes shows the red Mojang Studios screen. Immediately after, it closes again.
I looked into the files, and found in LocalState (within the minecraft directory I mentioned above), where com.mojang is normally stored, only the bootstrapStorage\crash directories, with some kind of crash information inside:
2025-09-09T20-14-38.e437b613.crashedsession{
"id": "e437b613-6d3b-4e00-8b10-5070dc429bed",
"device": "92/KJdwBz2rLOLs5tSo0B0lit0fSKAvBGp6INbLAydE=",
"build": "1.21.120.21",
"commit": "43badb0864b41fd19f3216b22564615dd952ecaf",
"branch": "main",
"flavor": "Publish",
"tags": {},
"begin": 1757448878,
"crash": 0
}Linked issues
is duplicated by 2
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Thanks for reporting this issue to us. Could you share any additional screenshots of the crash, or error messages you see?
Also, does the issue persist after restarting your machine?
I didn’t get any error messages, and restarting the PC did not help, I couldn’t get it loading a single time
This was the screen which opened after the Mojang Studios window closed, which lasted for less than a quarter than a second before it simply closed the app (don’t mind the green color):
[media]On my second laptop, this white screen also showed for a second but the regular Minecraft loading screen opened immediately after.
Another weird thing I noticed was the app icon on the taskbar. Instead of a black background, it showed a red background which it didn’t show before. On my second laptop, both the MC and Preview icons don’t have a background at all.
[media]I didn’t get any other unexpected behavior, and everything else seemed to be working just fine, no pending updates, no account issues, device specifications all perfect, enough empty disk space and memory.
Update: I just found out that I do have the new GDK version, the old filepath was still there but some files were moved to the new location. It also seems to be a device specific issue as my other PC can launch this Preview just fine.