Support and Troubleshooting — Windows Edition

Praepara Home is a desktop command center for homeowners that covers the entire home insurance lifecycle. It documents your home and belongings (room-by-room inventory with photos), watches for total-loss disaster scenarios with a dedicated recovery dashboard, tracks builder and third-party warranties, and manages an active insurance claim from filing through appeal — including a 14-template letter system for writing to insurers, adjusters, and contractors. Everything is generated and stored locally on your PC.

Praepara Home offers a 7-day free trial (for the Single Property tier) — no charge during that period. After the trial, continued use requires an annual subscription starting at $9.99/year for a single property, up to $155.99/year for unlimited properties. See the Pricing section for the full tier breakdown.

Yes. Praepara Home does not collect, transmit, or store any personal data on external servers — your property records, inventory photos, claim data, and warranty documents are created and stored exclusively on your device, encrypted with AES-256 via SQLCipher. There’s no account to sign into beyond your own Windows login, and no cloud sync unless you explicitly enable backup to your own cloud storage folder.

Each installation’s encryption key is tied to your specific Windows user account on that specific device (via Windows DPAPI), so data doesn’t automatically sync between computers. To move your data to a second PC, use Settings → Full App Backup to export an encrypted backup file, then restore it on the new machine. See “I can’t access my data on a new PC” below for the full steps.

They’re separate, independent apps built on similar features, not two views of the same product. They don’t sync, share an account, or share a cloud connection with each other — each stores its own data locally on its own device. Choose whichever platform you actually use day to day; you don’t need both.

You can cancel anytime through your Microsoft account’s subscription settings. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period — you keep full access until then, with no partial refund for unused time. Your locally stored data is never deleted by Modus Creatio L.L.C. as a result of cancellation, a lock, or non-renewal; it stays on your device either way.

It depends on your subscription tier: Single Property ($9.99/yr) covers 1 property, Growing Portfolio ($29.99/yr) covers up to 3, Small Portfolio ($77.99/yr) covers up to 10, and Unlimited ($155.99/yr) has no cap. You can upgrade at any time, and downgrades take effect at your next renewal rather than immediately.

Praepara Home is built on the Windows App SDK and runs on modern versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11, kept current through Windows Update. For the exact minimum OS version, architecture, and storage requirements for your device, check the “System requirements” section on the Microsoft Store listing before purchasing.

Start with the Denial-Reason Dashboard — pick the actual reason your claim was denied (wear & tear, pre-existing damage, cosmetic-only, excluded peril, roof-age/ACV-only, late reporting, and more), and Praepara tailors your Appeal/Reconsideration letter to the evidence that wins that specific fight. You can attach photos and documents straight from your Vault or Gallery, and the app’s read-only Denial Defense Guide walks through your rights, the appraisal process, and how to recognize bad faith along the way.

Log every call, email, and meeting in the Communication Log so you have a dated record, then use the Bad Faith Log to document specific instances of misconduct — unreasonable delays, underpayments, misrepresentations. Praepara’s letter system includes a Prompt Payment Demand, a Department of Insurance Complaint, and a Bad Faith Claim Handling Notice you can generate directly from that documented record.

Most policies pay Actual Cash Value (ACV) up front and hold back the depreciation — the “recoverable” portion — until you replace the item and submit proof, usually within a strict window. Miss that deadline and you forfeit the money permanently. The Depreciation Recovery tracker logs exactly how much is withheld per item and fires deadline alerts 30 days out so you don’t lose it.

Open the Total Loss Recovery Dashboard — it’s a phase-by-phase guide built around real public-assistance programs: Immediate Survival (Days 1–7, Red Cross shelters and Comfort Kits), Transitional (Weeks 1–4, FEMA Lodging Expense Reimbursement, Serious Needs Assistance, rental assistance), and Long-Term Rebuilding (Months 1+, including SBA loans — yes, even for individuals). An interactive FEMA checklist tracks exactly which documents you still need to submit, and a Low-Bandwidth Mode strips visual effects so the app stays usable on a weak connection in a disaster zone.

Build a room-by-room inventory with photos, brand, model, serial number, and replacement value for every item, and attach receipts or proof-of-purchase files directly. A built-in “What Insurers Want to See” guide covers item-level detail, the two-evidence rule, jewelry appraisals, and off-device backup — so when something happens, you can link that same baseline documentation as pre-loss evidence for the specific claim, pre-filtered to the affected rooms.

Bad faith generally means an insurer unreasonably delays, underpays, or misrepresents your claim. The read-only Denial Defense Guide explains how to recognize it, and the Bad Faith Log lets you document specific instances — with dates and details — as they happen, building the record you’d need for a Department of Insurance complaint or, if it comes to that, a lawsuit. The Bad Faith Claim Handling Notice letter template turns that documented record into formal correspondence.

Yes — Warranty Tracking is a separate hub (Windows only) that gives builder and third-party structural warranty claims the same treatment as insurance claims: its own communication log and generated letters. A Legal Reference Library covers approximate statute-of-limitations and statute-of-repose ranges, right-to-cure notice periods, and small-claims dollar caps for a subset of U.S. states, plus a guided self-assessment that flags whether your warranty may contain a binding arbitration clause. All of it is informational only — always verify specifics with an attorney.

Try these in order:

1. Make sure Windows itself is fully up to date (Settings → Windows Update) — the app relies on the Windows App SDK, which ships through Windows Update.
2. Fully close the app (check Task Manager for any lingering PraeparaHome process) and relaunch it from the Start menu rather than a pinned shortcut, which can go stale after an update.
3. From the Microsoft Store, open your Library, find Praepara Home, and choose “Update” (or uninstall and reinstall) to make sure you have the latest build.
4. Restart your PC. This clears out any stuck background processes holding a lock on the app’s local database.

If none of that works, email us (see below) with your Windows version (Settings → System → About) and roughly when the crash started.

No account, no sign-up. The app uses your existing signed-in Windows user account as its unlock boundary — if you’re logged into Windows, the app is unlocked. There’s nothing separate to register.

This is expected, not a bug. Your data’s encryption key is tied specifically to your Windows user account on that specific device (via Windows DPAPI) — it isn’t portable between accounts or machines by design.

To move to a new PC or a fresh Windows install:

1. Before switching, go to Settings inside the app and run a Full App Backup export, choosing your own passphrase.
2. Move that backup file to your new PC (via USB, your own cloud drive, etc.).
3. Install the app on the new PC and use the Restore option with your backup file and passphrase.

If you didn’t take a Full App Backup before losing access to your old Windows account, that data can’t be recovered — not by you, not by us. See the Terms & Privacy Policy, Section 7, for the full explanation of why.

Unfortunately that specific backup file can’t be decrypted without its passphrase — not by you, and not by us. There’s no reset or recovery option; this is by design so that even Modus Creatio L.L.C. cannot access your backup contents. If your original Windows account and device are still intact, your live data is unaffected — only that one backup file is unusable. Going forward, we recommend storing your passphrase in a password manager.

Cloud backup works by writing encrypted files into a local folder that your own cloud provider’s desktop app (OneDrive, Google Drive, Proton Drive, Dropbox, or iCloud) already keeps synced — Praepara Home doesn’t talk to any cloud provider’s servers directly.

If it looks stale, check:

• That your cloud provider’s own desktop sync app is running and signed in (look for its icon in the Windows system tray)
• That the sync app shows the target folder as “up to date,” not paused or in an error state
• In the App’s own Settings, that the backup folder path still points to a folder your cloud app is actually syncing

No. Backup files are encrypted on your device before they’re ever written to your cloud-synced folder, and they go directly from your device into your own account — never through us. We have no account access, API access, or visibility into any cloud provider you use.

Each subscription tier caps how many properties you can actively manage at once. If you downgrade to a lower tier (or your trial ends without subscribing to a tier that covers all your properties), any properties beyond your tier’s limit get locked — their name and address stay visible, but their inventory, claims, and documents aren’t accessible until you either upgrade or free up a slot. Nothing is deleted; locked data stays encrypted on your device.

All subscription changes happen through your Microsoft account’s subscription settings, not inside the app — Microsoft handles billing directly. Downgrades take effect at your next renewal date, not immediately; see the Terms & Conditions for the full billing terms.

All purchases are processed by Microsoft through the Microsoft Store, and refund requests go through Microsoft’s own refund policy — we don’t process payments or hold your payment information ourselves. Start a refund request from your Microsoft account’s order history.

All exports are generated entirely on your device. If a file won’t open:

1. Check the file finished writing — a very small file size (a few KB) usually means the export was interrupted, often by low disk space.
2. Re-run the export from the same screen rather than reusing an old file.
3. Make sure you have a program installed that can open the file type — Word (.docx) needs Word, LibreOffice, or a similar app; PDFs open in any modern browser if you don’t have a dedicated PDF reader.