can't set oculus as active openxr runtime

I have exactly the same issue. What can I do?

Hey johne_bgood and lchunwei. I wanted to chime in here and try to provide some insight if possible. 

Something that tends to work for this is making sure the app is being run from the administrator account on the pc. You could also try to 'Run as Administrator' but from what I've seen the first one should help out. 

If not though, I'd suggest putting in a bug report and reaching out to MetaStoreHelp through PMs. 

Until they fix the software, (unlikely as it's been over 2 years) the solution is to run the Oculus software under an administrator account as administrator. I have a non-admin account that I use for everything. The first time this happened to me I tracked down the registry entries and manually did that. This is ridiculous. This time around I chased my tail for hours and finally found a suggestion to try it under an admin account even though I was running the software as administrator under the user account. Can someone at Meta actually pick up this thread and do the right thing so it actually gets fixed in the software? 

Double check that you have the latest graphics driver updated.

Years later and I ran into the same issue with a brand-new Windows 11 installation. Editing the Windows registry did not work (If someone announces a solution by referring to the registry he or she should also put some information there what and how to do that 🙄 ). Repairing the Oculus app did not work. Starting the app as administrator did not work. But: Starting the app in my Windows account with highest privileges (the account which is created when installing Windows) did. I could set the default VR runtime and it is now also set when using my work Windows account (standard user/non-administrator).

Hope this helps (years later after this issue was reported, and still no perfect solution. At least not from Oculus.. what a shame).

Still does not Work with Quest three and all the latest updates of the oculus software

1. Open your Registry as admin.

2. Navigate to: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Khronos\OpenXR\1

3. Open the Active Runtime Value

4. Change it to : C:\Program Files\Oculus\Support\oculus-runtime\oculus_openxr_64.json

I have a slightly different problem: I can click on the setting to set my Oculus to default but it eventually resets and I have to set it again.

How do I keep it set?

I figure what was the issue, after 08 long hours (*T^T)....

1 - Open registry as admin.

2 - Navigate to: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Khronos\OpenXR\1.

3 - Create the "OpenXR" and "1" folders if you do not have, and inside the "1" folder, create the "ActiveRuntime" extensible value and enter: C:\Program Files\Oculus\Support\oculus-runtime\oculus_openxr_64.json.

4 - Navigate to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Khronos\OpenXR\1 and repeate step 3.

- that's it.

Hope it help!

Just to add to this lengthy discussion, I encountered the same issue. I had to install Oculus Link on a PC within a user-controlled organization. Although we had "admin-level" permissions for installation, we still faced issues with activating the "Set Oculus as Active" option. We also couldn't locate the "Khronos->OpenXR" registry entry, and manually adding it didn't resolve the problem. Ultimately, obtaining Local Admin level permissions for the PC allowed us to reinstall Oculus Link successfully, and it then worked for all users. I hope this can helps some one and that Meta will fix this issue. However, I understand that my fix may not be feasible in all organizations.