Nasty bug means Windows 10's default apps are reportedly crashing constantly for some users

Windows 10 users are in some cases being hit by frustrating errors when trying to run core (default) apps in the OS.

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Windows 11 users aren't hit by this one - just those on Windows 10 (Image Credit: Microsoft)

The Register spotted a thread on Microsoft's Answers.com support forum where there are quite a few posts from disgruntled Windows 10 users who are suffering at the hands of recent app updates.

What's happened is that the most recent updates for these core Windows 11 apps, piped through from the Microsoft Store, appear to have broken them.

So, as the original poster on the aforementioned thread observed, in their case Microsoft Photos, which used to work fine, now keeps closing itself just after launch. The app itself just disappears after a few seconds, with no error message - but the user says that if they open a photo in File Explorer, Photos also crashes but it does provide an error. (A 'file system error' in fact, complete with the obligatory useless code).

This behavior is happening to others as evidenced by the many posts following on from the initial help request, and in fact at the time of writing there are 35 pages worth of replies.

Interestingly, one response is from a user with two Windows 10 PCs, one of which is still on an older version of the Microsoft Photos app, and this works fine, whereas the updated application on the second computer crashes.

While Photos seems to be the worst affected piece of software, other core apps are misfiring as mentioned, and that includes the likes of Calculator, Movies & TV, Paint 3D, 3D Viewer and Microsoft's Feedback Hub (ironically, for those trying to feed back to Microsoft that there's a major problem here).

No solution in sight

We're told by affected users that there doesn't seem to be any way round these app crashing issues - running a repair on the PC, or uninstalling then reinstalling the misbehaving apps doesn't do anything to help.

It seems there's a problem with the Microsoft Store updates here - or as some have suggested, maybe a glitch with an update to the Microsoft Store itself - and hopefully Microsoft is investigating and will have a fix in the pipeline.

The only course of action, for now, seems to be to sit tight and wait for that fix.

There is one theory as to who may be affected here, as The Register highlights, namely that those with old CPUs could be in the firing line. And we mean really old hardware - Intel Core 2 Duo and Quad processors and AMD Athlon CPUs figure in some of the reported specs from those having trouble.

Hopefully Microsoft will shed more light on the matter soon enough.

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