How to resolve error when trying to open Windows Display Settings?

After I finally managed to upgrade from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10, everything seems to run smooth except one thing:

If I right click on the desktop and select "Display settings" I get an error message

"The operating system cannot run ms-settings:display"

On my German Windows 10 this looks like:

enter image description here

Beside this thread on the Microsoft forums which suggests to create a new profile (which I want to avoid) I found no solution.

My question:

Do you have any idea how to resolve this issue?

Update 1:

It happens for other items, too like

ms-settings:notifications
ms-settings:personalization-background

Update 2:

As pointed out, this seems to (also) be a general problem with URL protocol handling in Windows Explorer.

Doing a Win+R and typing "http://www.google.com" does result in the same error.

Also, clicking links in HTML emails in Microsoft Outlook 2013 results in an error message:

Something unexpected went wrong with this URL:

"http://www.google.com". The operating system cannot run %1.

Uwe Keim

Posted 2015-07-30T05:41:21.120

Reputation: 1 747

One suggestion was that the installation is corrupt and that a re-install of the update or a clean install of the PC might help. – Uwe Keim – 2015-07-30T07:24:51.813

Answers

I uninstalled IE developer channel and it started working for me

hoseyhosey

Posted 2015-07-30T05:41:21.120

Reputation: 146

That's incredible awesome! I tried that too, and after a reboot, it worked. Thanks a lot. – Uwe Keim – 2015-07-30T21:26:00.417

2Ha. Some people here don't have IE Dev Channel and had fixed the problem by installing it then uninstalling it... – CuddleBunny – 2015-08-17T13:32:08.267

Not sure about others, but in my case it did help to install and uninstall (used Win8.1 distributive from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=43359). I did had the Dev Channel installed at the Win10 upgrade time and then removed it. I guess it has not been removed completely.

– Pavel Gatilov – 2015-09-05T15:31:47.253

1I had multiple problems after my Windows 10 update:

Clicking on links in Outlook shows the error message "The operating system cannot run %1"
I wasn't able to open zip files in Windows Explorer. If I used the extract menu I got the same error message and the error code 0x800700B6

Both problems were gone after uninstalling Internet Explorer developer channel(!) – David Gausmann – 2016-07-29T06:53:31.170

You can fix it by editing the registry.

Type Win+R, then regedit
Browse to key: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\ms-settings

Make sure you have this:

.--------------.--------.-----------------.
|    Name      |  Type  |      Data       |
:--------------+--------+-----------------:
| (Default)    | REG_SZ | URL:ms-settings |
:--------------+--------+-----------------:
| URL Protocol | REG_SZ |                 |
'--------------'--------'-----------------'

If not:

remove all sub-keys below ms-settings.
remove all other values in ms-settings.
add missing values (right-click, new "String Value")

Works for Windows 10 (1803). May work for other versions too.

The result should look like this:

sdive

Posted 2015-07-30T05:41:21.120

Reputation: 559

This doesn't seem to work for me in build 1809, unfortunately. :( – Nathan Osman – 2018-10-13T22:09:09.970

I was, however, able to fix the issue by using System Restore. – Nathan Osman – 2018-10-13T23:09:31.980

Thanks for your feedback. I haven't upgraded yet to 1809... – sdive – 2018-10-17T10:26:51.367

Thank you for this solution it worked. I searched through 15 websites and google search results before finding your solution. Everyone else made irrelevant suggestions such as system restore, sfc /scannow and generic answers. Yours works. 100% – pablorenato – 2019-04-16T10:44:24.743