JohnX

It worked! Thanks Dan. I too have no idea why. Thanks to everyone for their help.

Now have it installed on a Win 10 v20h2 laptop. Only obvious difference between the laptop and PC's is the Win 10 version. Have checked the sidebyside reg entries on all three machines and they are identical. Event viewer entries on the two PC's are identical to the original details in my first post - Activation context generation failed for "C:\Users\johnd\Downloads\affinity-photo-1.9.0.exe".Error in manifest or policy file "C:\Users\johnd\Downloads\affinity-photo-1.9.0.exe" on line 0. Invalid Xml syntax. So, anybody help me please as to where I find the 'manifest or policy file' the error refers to? UPDATE. I've now updated one of my PC's to Win 10 20H2 so it matches the laptop build (see above), but Affinity Photo still won't load on the PC.

Just tried loading 1.90 on to another PC but with identical Win 10 build to mine - same error message. Can't help but think this points to Affinity Photo software issue?

Just downloaded it direct from the Affinity site. The file path is simply showing where I downloaded to. I have moved it direct to the desktop, but no change. Still fails with the same message. I've also looked at the Microsoft store, but can't download for there without an offer code or paying, so no alternative download site.

I downloaded and tried to install 1.9. Got an error stating: "The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log or use the command-line sxstrace.exe tool for more detail". I have run sxstrace.exe, followed by an attempt to install 1.85, (see below), but not managed to get a .txt version of it, or find the actual log on my Win 10 Pro PC, but I will keep hunting. I Googled the issue and found it common to games apps, and the recommendation was uninstall the app and all instances of Visual C++, which I've done. I have now reloaded all version's of Visual C++, and tried installing both 1.85 and 1.9 versions of Affinity Photo, but get the same message on both, so I am now without access to any version of Affinity Photo. Help please!!!! PS. Found this in Event Viewer> Activation context generation failed for "C:\Users\johnd\Downloads\affinity-photo-1.9.0.exe".Error in manifest or policy file "C:\Users\johnd\Downloads\affinity-photo-1.9.0.exe" on line 0. Invalid Xml syntax.