mysqli_store_result returns FALSE in case the query didn't return a result set (if the query was, for example an INSERT statement). This function also returns FALSE if the reading of the result set failed. You can check if you have got an error by checking if mysqli_error doesn't return an empty string, if mysqli_errno returns a non zero value, or if mysqli_field_count returns a non zero value. Also possible reason for this function returning FALSE after successful call to mysqli_query can be too large result set (memory for it cannot be allocated). If mysqli_field_count returns a non-zero value, the statement should have produced a non-empty result set.

Although it is always good practice to free the memory used by the result of a query using the mysqli_free_result function, when transferring large result sets using the mysqli_store_result this becomes particularly important.