Windows 10: Microsoft Apps suddenly broken

Quote "and you keep all your files and programs." What? I have read many times that this is not correct at all! I have been told you lose all your programs and third-party apps, and may lose drivers too. All you keep is the Windows apps and files --- and my files are already on another drive. I have seen statements on both sides of this argument contradicted so often I really must find a way of getting an authoritative verdict before I take further steps.

 

Have you actually read the tutorial posted by Ix07 ?
Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade


Open the link and go to Step #13.
What does the screenshot say ?
Does it say "Keep personal files and apps " ?

 

...........I have seen statements on both sides of this argument contradicted so often I really must find a way of getting an authoritative verdict before I take further steps.........................

There is NOTHING more authoritative than the tutorials compiled by Brink in these forums.
I will go one step further. The tutorials compiled are more authoritative than the programmers in Microsoft.

 

I've done a repair install in Windows 10 and it does keep your apps & programs - provided you follow the tutorial! You may need to reset some user options such as desktop text & background settings.

 

"If you are using Media creation tool to reinstall or repair Windows 10, all third party programs will be deleted. to know more please refer to section "Reset your PC" to know what Reset your PC option do on Windows 10."


Microsoft Support Engineer in Microsoft Community Forum.

Refer the section Reset your PC from the Microsoft article below.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/windows-10-recovery-options


Refer the section Reset your PC from the Microsoft article below.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/windows-10-recovery-options

• I have seen it said (here) I should follow the guidance from Microsoft but then when faced with something they do not accept they claim their advice is superior to Microsoft's. Hence I still do not know who to believe.

Yes I have read the article referred to and much more besides. The screenshot cited is a major cause of the confusion, with misleading and ambiguous wording. "Keep personal files and apps " is NOT "keep personal files, programs and third-party apps". The terms 'apps' and 'programs' have different usages, though they are frequently (wrongly?} used interchangeably. The fact that the screenshot does not refer either to 'programs' or to 'third-party apps' is notable for its absence. It still leaves me concerned that "all third-party programs will be deleted." It will be too late to find out if it is true, after a re-install.

David Pogue's "Missing Manual for Windows 10" says of "Reinstall, Leave Your Files" that "it erases all your programs, drivers, Windows settings, and programs you have installed". He adds that Windows displays a list of all the programs about to be deleted. But then displays a screenshot referring to apps! "Your apps will be removed."

I am not taking sides in this argument, I dont have the expertise. What I am saying is that it is the technically well informed who are causing the confusion for the rest of us.

 

I've done a repair install twice - in Windows 8.1 & Windows 10. The repair install does keep third party programs provided you follow the repair Install Tutorial in this Forum. I used a USB repair disc from the Media Creation Tool for the Windows 10 repair install.

Brink's Tutorial at Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade says "This tutorial will show you how to do a repair install of Windows 10 by performing an in-place upgrade without losing anything".

 

To : Clayto

What has Reset your PC has anything to do with Repair Install ?

They are 2 different animals.
Reset option only keeps your files and nothing else.
Repair Install keep your files, settings and apps.


..................David Pogue's "Missing Manual for Windows 10" says of "Reinstall, Leave Your Files" that "it erases all your programs, drivers, Windows settings, and programs you have installed"................

David Pogue is wrong. Period.

Look. If you believe David Pogue, that's your choice.
This is my last reply to this "discussion" and I am unsubscribing it after this reply.

 

I was replying in posts 47 &49 to posts 45 & 46 referring to repair install. Post 48 refers to repairing Windows which some might take to mean a repair install.

 

Sorry, my last reply was addressed to Clayto, not you.
I have amended my reply indicating my reply is directed to him.

 

"reinstall or repair" are referred to together in the Microsoft forum reply.

David Pogue may or may not be wrong --- though he is a long established leading writer in the field. The point I am making is that with so much contradiction among 'experts' how is a non-expert like me to judge the best course of action?

Brink's article is out of my range but more specifically this: "You will need at least around 8.87 GB + what Windows is currently using of free space available on the Windows drive." My 32 GB SSD Tablet now has only about 3 GB free, despite a lot of effort going in to freeing up space in different ways. I managed to get the upgrade done successfully when it had only 5 GB and just managed to do the November update myself when it was still 5 GB but since then it has shrunk further, for reasons I do not understand, despite transferring all the apps I can and downloading any new programs to drive D.

I was only considering a re-install because it has been recommended as the only way to deal with the 'app trashing' November update bug, but may be making some progress with that by other means.

 

Update. I have carried out a clean re-install due to having totally lost all sound services which MS online techs could not resolve and to remove the November update bug (two birds one stone). The latter was cured at last but not the sound problems. Now that is sorted too, by re-installing an earlier version of the audio driver, hence an example of updating drivers not always being a good idea. Because

 

Did you do one of those in-place upgrades/reinstall? If so, how did it work? Was it literally as you left it after?

 

Yeah I'd be curious too should the need ever arise. Does your computer return to what it was before? The main thing that always puts me off trying to re install Windows is losing all your hard work and programs. For example iTunes, steam with all the game installs plus various other game clients and software. How safe is that sort of stuff in a repair/ in place upgrade or some of the other options (I forget what they are now (reset / refresh ???)

 

Hello

I do not think my experience will be of much use to either of you. This is because I have a major problem with a small SSD with very limited free storage space. As a result MS techs failed to re-install W10, it would get to the end then report failure and roll back to my previous installation. I managed to learn from mistakes and carry out the re-install myself by opting not to keep anything: apps, programs, all files. --- this was OK for me because due to the inadequate storage issue I had been in the process of moving everything to external storage (Memory Cards and USB Flash Drives), keeping the SSD C drive (amost) exclusively for the OS. It is working well for me this way, but I have the impression it will not be what you want.

 

I fixed this issue and wrote a small PowerShell script that should hopefully solve it for anyone else. The problem is that the physical .xml manifest file is missing off the filesystem, however it likely still exists within a table in StateRepository-Deployment.srd. This (and StateRep-Machine) is the system database file (sqlite-based) that controls many aspects of the installed store apps.

The script I created is located at:
Fix for Remove-AppxPackage error . Requires psexec to be installed · GitHub

There are two requirements, you must have psexec.exe installed and available in the environment PATH (can you run psexec.exe from the shell without giving it an absolute path?) - and you must be running the script as an admin.

It will utilize PsExec.exe to access the StateRepository-Machine.srd file to get a list of all installed apps and the expected manifest paths. It will then query StateRepository-Deployment.srd to get the contents of the manifest file. It will then create the files in that location with those contents. PsExec.exe is necessary so it can be ran under the LOCAL SYSTEM security context, so we don't have to gain access to those files by changing filesystem permissions.

I tested it pretty thoroughly and ran it on my machine and it fixed the problems I was having. I have not tested this with other users' configurations, but please let me know if you have any issues.

PsExec.exe can be downloaded as a part of the SysInternals free system tools at: Sysinternals Suite

I hope this helps someone else.

Screenshots:
(1st pic, is the error I was receiving trying to uninstall an appx package - before running my script)
(2nd pic, running the script)
(3rd pic, uninstalling apps!)