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

Hello Greg

We appreciate that you are assisting in moving this up through the MVP channels. I believe the only reason why this is not a widespread issue is that it only affects machines that have multiple languages installed and active, or have set default font scaling beyond 100%. They are probably pretty rare builds, but they are still quite present, especially in a HTPC environment like my current configuration.

I'd argue this configuration isn't rare at all. Any high-DPI laptop will have its scaling set to greater than 100% by default, including Microsoft's own devices (Surface Pro's and Surface Books)

I don't have multiple language packs on my device, but its a Surface Book therefore its default scaling is greater than 100%, and I use a Surface Dock so it uses different scaling depending on whether it's docked or not.

I probably have the same issue and am watching this thread with very interest.

In my case (desktop PC with 1920x1080 display), the other scaling resource packages than 100% are deleted every time when a new user account is made and signed in. It breaks the store apps in the other accounts that have the other scaling resource packages in their dependencies.

Since the Windows Store runs without error at the initial sign-in to the new account in my case, my workaround for this issue is to update store apps and download the necessory scaling packages for the other accounts by changing the display scaling every time when creating a new account.

The package manager does not seem to care multiple user accounts.

This was confirmed elevated to the Windows Store team today via MVP Communications Channel.   I'll let you know anything I hear. 

I still think others should assure the Windows 10 Install Integrity Checklist  and try the Repair Upgrade because there may be multiple factors causing this and one or more of these may help.  Unlike in WIndows 7 where the Repair Install could fail to help, this is the first time I've heard of the WIndows 10 Repair Upgrade not working to fix problems.  I just ran one today via Teamviewer and they are quite simple and easy.  How to: perform a repair upgrade using the Windows 10 ISO file - Microsoft Community

Since the Windows Store runs without error at the initial sign-in to the new account in my case, my workaround for this issue is to update store apps and download the necessory scaling packages for the other accounts by changing the display scaling every time when creating a new account.

The package manager does not seem to care multiple user accounts.

I'm trying to wrap my head around this, can you break this down step by step?

This was confirmed elevated to the Windows Store team today via MVP Communications Channel.   I'll let you know anything I hear. 

Thank you Greg!!

I still think others should assure the Windows 10 Install Integrity Checklist  and try the Repair Upgrade because there may be multiple factors causing this and one or more of these may help.  Unlike in WIndows 7 where the Repair Install could fail to help, this is the first time I've heard of the WIndows 10 Repair Upgrade not working to fix problems.  I just ran one today via Teamviewer and they are quite simple and easy.  How to: perform a repair upgrade using the Windows 10 ISO file - Microsoft Community

OOBE does not appear to run if the workstation is already attached to a domain, or at least when I ran the repair upgrade it did not present e with one. Is that expected?

I can confirm Castle's finding to some extent. Currently about half of the built-in Windows apps are broken for my own as well as my wife's account. There is a third user account on our Surface Pro 3 which is only used to host a few shared resources, and that we rarely log on to interactively. I checked this account today, and for that one some of the broken apps are still working, probably because we never spent time customising that account when it comes to multi-language or display scaling, so it's still happy with just the resources for en-US and 100% display scaling.

It seems that actions taken while logged on with one account might have negative side effects on the Windows apps used by other accounts on the same machine. It looks like the logged on account's settings are applied globally and don't take into account that other accounts might have additional resources installed or configured.

Let's not waste too much time on the repair upgrade, guys. Although it seems to have fixed 100% of all install problems so far, past performance should not be taken as an indicator for future results. By now there is ample evidence that the problem is introduced by app upgrades, and even a freshly installed or upgrade-repaired system will eventually run into trouble if multi-language packs are used or different display scalings are applied on systems with hi-res displays or multiple screens.

It certainly won't hurt to run it, and it might fix the odd app issue that is not related to this scenario, but don't get your hopes up that a repair upgrade will permanently fix the issue we're talking about here.

I have two suggestions how to deal with this issue in the future:

1. Include all resource XML files for all supported languages and display scalings by default. I had a look at the files in the folder C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\AppRepository, and the size of the XML files is between just a few hundred bytes and less than 100 KB, so adding a few more won't hurt much.

2. If that is not an option for whatever reason, change the AppxPackage cmdlets to not treat missing resource XML files as fatal errors. Make them warnings but allow the process to complete, and put the missing files on a download queue for the next Windows Update cycle.

Apps are a 21st century technology, and we should be able to expect resiliency and self-repair capability of this new framework. The current situation where apps just crash without any further feedback to the user and can neither be installed nor uninstalled nor reinstalled is just unacceptable.

Here it is.

Step 1

Check the dependent packages of the troubled app in the troubled user account.

For Windows Store, I executed the folloing command-let in PowerShell run as not administrator.

(Get-AppxPackage *WindowsStore).Dependencies.PackageFullName

Here is the result in my case.

Microsoft.VCLibs.140.00_14.0.23816.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe
Microsoft.NET.Native.Framework.1.1_1.0.23115.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe
Microsoft.NET.Native.Runtime.1.1_1.1.23406.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe
Microsoft.WindowsStore_11602.1.26.0_neutral_split.scale-100_8wekyb3d8bbwe
Microsoft.WindowsStore_11602.1.26.0_neutral_split.language-ja_8wekyb3d8bbwe
Microsoft.WindowsStore_11602.1.26.0_neutral_split.scale-150_8wekyb3d8bbwe

Step 2

Check the missing packages in C:\Program Files\WindowsApps.

In this time, I ran the PowerShell or Command Prompt as administrator in order to obtain the privilege to access this directory.

This is the PowerShell command for Windows Store.

ls *WindowsStore*

In my case, the following package was missing.

Microsoft.WindowsStore_11602.1.26.0_neutral_split.scale-150_8wekyb3d8bbwe

Step 3

Sign-in an administrator account and create a new user account.

In my case, I made a standard local account.

Step 4

Sign-in the newly created account and change the display scaling to the missing percent scale by the setting - system - display panel.

In my case, I changed to 150%.

Step 5

Run Windows Store and go to the download and update, then check the updates.

In my case, most apps including Windows Store had updated. After that, the missing package existed in the C:\Program Files\WindowsApps.

Step 6

Sign-out the new account and sign-in the troubled account again, and check if the troubled app runs.