Many built-in Windows apps broken since late April / early May 2016

Hello Olli,

We realize the inconvenience you have experienced.

Are you facing this issue in domain network environment?

If you see an error message 0x80073CF6, the respective package can't be registered. To know more information about this issue, you can check the AppXDeployment-Server event log. Do refer below link about Troubleshooting packaging, deployment, and query of Windows Store apps for more help in this regard.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/hh973484%28v=vs.85%29.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

Let us know how it went.

Hi Yashwanth

Thanks for your response. My network is not a domain environment, however, others might have experienced the broken Windows apps in domain environments, because the issue is not related to the network environment that an affected computer is in.

Yes, I checked the event logs with Get-AppxLog, and the entries revealed that both registering and unregistering the broken apps fail because of missing dependency files, as explained above. Please familiarise yourself with the initial thread referenced above which provides the details and was responded to by your colleague Wungraileng Vashi but has since gone stale, despite many people chiming in and confirming the issue. Please pay particular attention in the thread to iquazee's excellent analysis of the issue, and pass it on without further delay to a person or team who can provide proper support.

We need an urgent fix to repair the broken apps, either by a manual workaround that is easy enough for a user to apply and doesn't compromise the system security, or by a redeployment of the broken apps with all required dependency files and XML manifests intact. Microsoft is pushing everyone towards using modern and UWP apps and taking away their Win32 predecessors, so you need to make sure these apps work and aren't crippled again and again by dodgy updates.

Please refrain from responding with default responses or suggestions, like uninstall/reinstall, repair upgrade, delete/create user profile etc. because it has already been proven that none of these will fix the issue, as the root cause is a botched update of the affected apps that was deployed about a month ago.

Thanks

Olli

I have been following Olli's thread, and I can validate exactly what he has been testing. I have a Windows 10 workstation that is a member of a Windows 2008 SBS domain, and has only the EN-US language installed. The default video scaling is 150%.

The update manifests are missing scaling and language specific files to complete updates. It has caused most default Windows Apps, like Store, News, and (at one point) Mail. It is critical that a fix be published to the general public to fix this core functionality of Windows 10.

Every day there are more and more people posting to this forum about apps that fail to open, most commonly the Store, Photos, Calculator, and Mail and/or Calendar.

The standard suggested fixes have been tried many, many times and proven not to work. We need Microsoft to address this problem and issue a patch. 

Interesting news, yet again. Today some of my broken apps started showing up in the start menu again, and sure enough, my Surface Pro 3 received a whole raft of new app files today (Sat 4-Jun) between 8am and 11am New Zealand time. Updated app files include

Microsoft.BingFinance_4.9.76.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.BingFinance_4.9.76.0_neutral_split.scale-100_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.BingFinance_4.9.76.0_x86__8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.BingNews_4.9.76.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.BingNews_4.9.76.0_neutral_split.scale-100_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.BingNews_4.9.76.0_x86__8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.BingSports_4.9.76.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.BingSports_4.9.76.0_neutral_split.scale-100_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.BingSports_4.9.76.0_x86__8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.BingWeather_4.9.76.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.BingWeather_4.9.76.0_neutral_split.scale-100_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.BingWeather_4.9.76.0_x86__8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.CommsPhone_2.17.27003.0_neutral_split.scale-100_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.CommsPhone_2.17.27003.0_neutral_split.scale-150_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.CommsPhone_2.17.27003.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.CommsPhone_2.5.27003.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.MicrosoftSolitaireCollection_3.9.5250.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.MicrosoftSolitaireCollection_3.9.5250.0_neutral_split.scale-100_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.MicrosoftSolitaireCollection_3.9.5250.0_neutral_split.scale-150_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.MicrosoftSolitaireCollection_3.9.5250.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.Office.OneNote_17.6965.57881.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.Office.OneNote_2015.6965.57881.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.Office365AdminUniversalBeta_2.29.0.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.Office365AdminUniversalBeta_2.29.0.0_neutral_split.language-de_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.Office365AdminUniversalBeta_2.29.0.0_neutral_split.scale-100_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.Office365AdminUniversalBeta_2.29.0.0_neutral_split.scale-150_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.Office365AdminUniversalBeta_2.29.0.0_x86__8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.Windows.Photos_16.526.11220.0_neutral_split.scale-100_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.Windows.Photos_16.526.11220.0_neutral_split.scale-150_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.Windows.Photos_16.526.11220.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.Windows.Photos_2016.526.12150.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.WindowsCamera_2016.404.120.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.WindowsCamera_2016.404.120.0_neutral_split.scale-150_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.WindowsCamera_2016.404.120.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps_17.6868.41141.0_neutral_de-de_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps_17.6868.41141.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps_2015.6868.41141.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.WindowsMaps_2016.429.714.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.WindowsMaps_4.1603.1190.0_neutral_split.scale-100_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.WindowsMaps_4.1603.1190.0_neutral_split.scale-150_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.WindowsMaps_4.1603.1190.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.ZuneMusic_2019.6.20961.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.ZuneMusic_3.6.20961.0_neutral_resources.scale-150_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.ZuneMusic_3.6.20961.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.ZuneVideo_2019.6.20961.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.ZuneVideo_3.6.20961.0_neutral_resources.scale-150_8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml
Microsoft.ZuneVideo_3.6.20961.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe.xml

As you can see some of the updated apps include language-specific files, like the Mail app, while others include display-scaling-specific files for 100% and 150% - exactly these files were missing earlier in the dodgy updates from late April / early May.

Either the forum people who have gone dark on us passed this on and the responsible team or unit is now fixing the apps, or someone else noticed it, too, and maybe paid for a support call that got through to the right people. Your guess is as good as mine, since nobody's talking to us.

There are still some apps that are broken, like Calculator, Alarms & Clock, PDF Reader, Scan, and last but not least, the Store app. Getting somewhere, but still not back to normal.

Wonder if any of you are seeing similar results?

Cheers

Olli

There ae new app files are indeed there from the time Olli specified, but they have not regenerated new app tiles on my PC or restored functionality to affected apps. This does not appear to be fixing anything  a) on my user profile on the workstation. This is a profile that I recreated, and when created did not deploy any of the tiles for the affected applications. They are still missing. b) on my wife's profile on the same computer that has been untouched throughout this ordeal. All apps affected are still crashing, including the ones with the new manifest.

Olli: Did you have to rerun the registration/deployment PS script to get the tiles to show again?

I did not have to run any PowerShell AppxPackage cmdlets - it was somehow done automatically behind the scenes. I found a bunch of events in the System event log like this

Log Name:      System
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-WindowsUpdateClient
Date:          4/06/2016 10:36:49 AM
Event ID:      43
Task Category: Windows Update Agent
Level:         Information
Keywords:      Started,Installation
User:          SYSTEM
Computer:      Paddy
Description:
Installation Started: Windows has started installing the following update: Windows Maps

Log Name:      System
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-WindowsUpdateClient
Date:          4/06/2016 10:38:31 AM
Event ID:      19
Task Category: Windows Update Agent
Level:         Information
Keywords:      Success,Installation
User:          SYSTEM
Computer:      Paddy
Description:
Installation Successful: Windows successfully installed the following update: Windows Maps

for the Maps app and others that started working. Looks like some process running with SYSTEM privileges, probably TrustedInstaller or some other Windows Update process, downloaded and registered these apps.

Sad to hear it didn't work the same way for you, which makes this mess even more confusing. Also, when I log on with one of the other user accounts on my Surface Pro 3, apps that are still broken for me, like People, work fine for that other user, probably until the point where I change the display settings or language, so there is a user-dependent element to this whole chaos as well.

Ordeal is the right word. It's unbelievable that these apps just crash, without any error information provided to the user, or any resiliency in the deployment process to either roll back to the last known good version or treating missing dependency files as non-critical. This is a slap in the face of any user trying to adopt these "crapplications" instead of sticking with Win32 applications, and the complex set of files that have to be in perfect shape and order to make these apps work brings back bad memories of DLL ****.

Let us know how it goes.

Best of luck

Olli

They did try to install (Microsoft Phone, Groove Music, Microsoft Solitaire Collection, MSN Money, MSN News, MSN Weather) after downloading updates and not one succeeded last night. All had the ubiquitous 0x80073CF6 error.       

I am really confused. These apps and especially the Store app are the new face of Microsoft's revenue stream in the desktop space. Why do I feel that they are poo pooing it as if its some minor inconvenience? If I were a software developer that leverages the Windows Store as a marketplace for their goods, I would have some serious questions as to its reliability, and have serious reconsiderations as to its viability as a storefront.

Sorry to hear the updated apps are still not working on your system, was hoping they would come right as well - but there seems to be no pattern in this mess.

Totally agree with your statement re the Store app. I can only imagine that there is a serious breakdown in comms between customer feedback, like ours here, and the developers. I have seen it numerous times with various companies over the past few years - it's all about featuritis and pushing stuff out that someone thinks is cool, with little testing and QA that it's actually quality code that will perform well. And the people looking after this "answer" forum here are probably trained to fob us off with the typical boilerplate responses and not able or allowed to pick up if someone reports a serious issue and forward it on. Maybe you need to raise a paid support call to be taken seriously.

Brave new world, huh?