Windows 8.1: Most Metro Apps crash immediately at launch

[HippsieGypsie]

Welcome to Windows Eight Forums, bobbyphunk.

Thanks for posting that and the link. Kind of weird. Wonder what it's installing and/or fixing in the process. Is there an install log by any chance?

 

[Montenegrina]

Hello to all,


I am new here and probably a lot of people will not believe me, but I am still going to explain what I have done to make this weather tile in Windows 8.1 Pro work.


I have read online what I could grab on Metro Apps crash immediately at launch and have don all that people have suggested, but nothing... I have installed Windows 8.1 Pro 11 times because of this because I like my weather tile. And was at my end and wanted to go back to Windows 8 Pro. But before I would do that I wanted to see what is going on with something else that bothered me.


I live in Montenegro (former Yugoslavia) and I like to set my location as I used to do when I have lived in Amsterdam. And since I live and chat a lot with people in former Yugoslavia I use some letters that are not used in English like šđčćž. So I use the language bar. And I set Montenegro to be the first so I do not have to switch each time from EN to SR I restart windows.


This has made me a problem... As I like my Windows to be on English it changed some things that are not called no more in the English language but in Montenegrin. So I went to repair this to se what makes it change.


I first went to Control Panel\All Control Panel Items and then region/location... It still did have some APPS on Montenegrin did not change a thing. And I want it to be on English. But I have done a restart, and on each restart I try the weather tile (by default because I want it to work LOL)


BOOOOOOOOM... Weather tile works... hmmm??? I tot noooo way.... So I got back to Control Panel\All Control Panel Items and then region/location... And made it again Montenegro and not United States. Restarted my Laptop


Weather not working... I could not believe it... So again I went to Control Panel\All Control Panel Items and then region/location... Set it to United States, and weather tile works again.


UNBELIEVABLE but true.


My first problem was not resolved yet so I went to Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Language and put English as the first language and Montenegrin as the second. Restarted my Laptop and see it is called now weather, click on it.. It works.


This I have tried without restarting the Laptop and all my PC and this works.


I gotten weather to work but have had no live tile, this I resolved by right click on the weather tile and then turn off live tile and then turn on live tile.


And now all is working... This is maybe not a problem for people that have United States set as their location but I think for other that have something else they have this problem not working weather tile. I do not know if this problem is with other countries but it is with Montenegro for shore.


I read a lot on this forum, never posted something, never registered, but now I have, just to help out, because I have reinstalled Windows for 11 times and done all that I have read here and on all other forums, nothing worked, only this.


I hope for shore people will read this here and it will help them solve this problem. This may be a bug only for some countries like Montenegro, but for shore is a bug.


Sorry for the long letter...
Greetings from Montenegro

 

[HippsieGypsie]

Welcome to Windows Eight Forums, Montenegrina.

Thanks for taking the time to post your solution. :thumb:

 

[Montenegrina]

Welcome to Windows Eight Forums, Montenegrina.

Thanks for taking the time to post your solution. :thumb:

Thank you for the welcome.
I hope it will help someone

Greetings from Montenegro

 

[snerd]

Don't run Metro apps!!

 

[HippsieGypsie]

Don't run Metro apps!!

Ok. That's if one has the time not to: http://www.eightforums.com/general-support/16379-real-quality-boot-time-8-verses-7-a.html

Modern/Metro apps are simply more efficient in gathering and conveying information than Desktop applications time wise and resource wise. This is not to say Desktop applications aren't useless. They were good for their day. I just think their days are numbered.

 

[jimboroonee]

This is a very long thread, so I've not read all the posts. However, I had the same problem described by everyone here; I found that the metro apps didn't work one day, they began to load, then placed me back to the start screen. I saw the apps in the bar on the left side of the screen, but they wouldn't work. I'd installed iTunes and thought that it may have something to do with the sharing that app likes to do. I found that I was in a homegroup, which I was pretty sure I'd not joined. So I opened the homegroup settings in control panel and unjoined the homegroup. Problem solved. It must have something to do with permissions. Anyway, it may be something to check even if you know you didn't join one. If you're part of a homegroup, try dropping it.

 

[Daxter]

Don't run Metro apps!!

Yes. Because we all want to open a browser to see are weather Windows 8 was meant to give you as much information about where you are. Hence "Live Tiles".

 

[Tibor Zupan]

I have been having the same issues since upgrading to Windows 8.1 on Sunday night. Everything in the desktop world works normally but the entire metro world (store, apps, even PC settings) doesn't work. I was able to get my Windows Store app to start working by using the following command in the Command Prompt (Admin):

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register $Env:SystemRoot\WinStore\AppxManifest.xml

Once I had the store back and running I was going to try to uninstall and reinstall apps. However, when I tried this, I got an error from the Windows Store of:
Error code 0x8007002

This was for anything I was trying to install.

Next, I was going to try and set-up a new user to see if I would have the same issues. However, I was not able to do this in PC settings as it was not working and Control Panel refers to PC settings to do this. However, I did find the command prompt to do this:
net UserName /add

Once I did this, it showed up in control panel as a User Account I manipulated. I did not assign it administrative rights yet.

I logged off my administrator account and logged into this new account that is a local account only at this point and, what do you know, my Metro apps are working, including PC Settings. This is as far as I have currently gotten but I would love to know why this would be the case. I can go ahead and try to transfer admin rights, and set-up everything that I have now under the new user account but I would love to avoid that if possible since it is like having to setup the computer again.

I found this usefull command you can copy/paste in to the cmd, it fixes your Computer settings

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register $Env:SystemRoot\ImmersiveControlPanel\AppxManifest.xml

Enjoy

 

[HippsieGypsie]

Welcome to Windows EightForums, jimboroonee and Tibor Zupan.

Thank you both for posting your solutions! :thumb:

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there

I'd forget the Metro weather app - there are so many BETTER ones

BBC is good - also US weather channel I'm told is OK
.
Cheers
jimbo

 

[yankydwad]

Hi all,

First off I have not read all 18 pages of this thread, so there may be some repeat, but this may help people today.

I have had to trouble shoot a "windows 8.1 apps crash, including store" problem myself, and just before losing my mind I started thinking specifics. This laptop had had CorelX3 installed on it. I googled that and found a delightful page HERE that basically says YES, CorelX3 and CorelX4 change permissions on the HKCR registry key, and they further say to check out THIS link on microsoft site. This fix is unpleasant for noobs but doable generally. I admit I will try it tomorrow, and report back if it gets nasty.

But let's think about that. A program from a few years ago (here CorelX3 and CorelX4) changes permissions on registry keys. It is unlikely that these 2 applications are the only ones that do that. Could it be, I say, COULD IT BE that installing some or even many older programs invokes this kind of permission change and stops apps from working in windows 8.1? Hmmm? It's not impossible, is it? So MAYBE just maybe this is a general problem that may even explain a lot of app crashes and store failures, in windows 8.1. I'm just saying ...

And with that in mind, the fix microsoft mention is general, may apply to all sorts of apps, but only requires looking at the keys, and is worth trying. Maybe the nightmare is almost over, for some at least ...

 

[HippsieGypsie]

Welcome to Windows EightForums, yankydwad.

I don’t think that’s been mentioned in the thread that I remember. That does make a lot of sense. Thanks for posting that solution! I’m quite sure it will help someone. :thumb:

 

[katmatized]

I too, am having identically the same issues as described. But haven't tried anything for fear of really screwing things up. And also thank you for the errors look-up hook-up, it really helped me! I agree Microsoft has really done it this time hopefully they will get it fixed before it gets any worse (if it in fact can).

 

[seattlerust]

Metro Apps Crash on Launch - New Data

Hi,

This is information that I have not seen on the thread yet (I think). I am running a Dell Studio with Windows 8.1 Pro 64 bit. I am also dual booting with Windows 7.

I have my computer set in the BIOS to autoboot at 6 AM every morning. This has been working flawlessly for over six months, and have had no problems with launch of metro apps. But a week ago (approximately) the metro crash syndrome started occurring. Rebooting the machine corrects the problem.

Perhaps one of the recent Windows 8.1 updates has precipitated this and somehow the autoboot could be involved but I am at a loss to understand how. No other changes have been made to the computer. Hopefully, this snippet of additional information might trigger a solution.

Any advice or thoughts will be appreciated.

SR

 

[AmigaRoots]

Thanks Montenegrina for the helpful Weather solution. Microsoft should of course fix this asap.

 

[Stratelier]

Can I chime in with the same problem?

I use my laptop mostly for word processing and Internet browsing and starting approximately last week (November 16th) Metro apps have ceased to run. My list of tested apps so far is pretty short, but:
- Bing Weather (sidenote: the live tile works fine, but the app itself fails to run)
- Wordament
- PC Settings

Events logged include IDs 5793 and 5951, as usual.

Steps I have taken after enough searches to waste an evening:

- Reviewed permissions mentioned in the MSKB article Win8: App: Modern: Apps fail to start if default registry or file permissions modified and everything checked out fine (save one registry key -- HKLM/Drivers -- but adding the All App Packages permissions there did not yield any visible changes as of yet)
- Some pages suggested it's related to being part of a network domain. I do have my PC configured on a local network domain but the problem didn't occur until recently.
- Some pages suggested running a System Restore to an earlier restore point. I'm taking no action on this lead yet, but my available restore points are "Critical Update" points dated November 19th and November 12th -- and I can safely ignore the first one.

The next lead I'm going to test is to uninstall/reinstall some Metro apps to verify if the problem persists.

 

[JHough]

Running task manager and resource monitor highlights resource problems which facilitates crashes. My iPhone update crashed repeatedly after a windows update when MIcrosoft's defrag and Norton's 360 backup overloaded the disk.

 

[Stratelier]

Process Monitor is ... verbose. Exactly what am I looking for? Process name(s), etc. I'm currently using the "PC Settings" app as my testcase.

[EDIT] - Okay, looks like I might have missed performing a step somewhere -- called "reboot the machine" -- because now everything appears to be resolved. I did review my file permissions as stated in the KB article (found & fixed one directory missing the AAP permissions), but when that did not appear to change anything I tried using a System Restore to my Nov. 12 restore point. (A process which took approximately 15 minutes.) Tested Bing weather app and instead of the Launch.Contract error, I got a "failed to start in the alloted time" error instead. Did not test PC settings app. System Restored to my current status (another 15 minutes) and Metro apps are now working again.

 

[JHough]

Crashes Caused by Resource Bottlenecks

My apologies for being, too general with the advice of running task manager and resource monitor. The main reasons for crashes are resource problems, bad memory, bad drivers, bad hard drives. My latest crashes occurred with Itunes after a Windows update. As seen below the average disk response time in the worst case was 20,010 ms (20 seconds). This caused Itunes to incompletely load the phone, which became useless. Checking how heavily the disk, memory and CPU are loaded points to a resource problem. In my case, the defrag service and the n360.exe (Norton 360 backup) used up the disk resource after an update. By leaving the computer alone for an hour or so, the defragging and n360.exe finished using up the disk.

If all the resources are loaded less than 80% in most cases, then resource bottlenecks are not the problem. Though if one core is loaded 100%, which shows up as 25% on my 4 core processor, the program running on that core may have a problem.