Windows 10: Microsoft People app corrupted and can't reinstall

Hi,

As others have noted, the bundled Microsoft People app tried to update this morning, but mine failed (as per reliability history). After that, clicking on the People app icon failed to launch the app.

So I decided to try and uninstall the app in order to reinstall it from the windows app store. Using powershell in admin mode, I think I managed to uninstall it, but perhaps not completely. Now the app icon has gone from All Apps, but searching for people finds something called @ {Microsoft.people_10.0.3450 ... etc.

Also, finding the People app in the Store says that it's already installed.

How to I properly clear it off my system and reinstall it properly? I know it might not be the best contacts app out there, but it's OK and right now it's a mess that I want to try to sort out...

Thanks,

Alex

:)

 

Cannot open store and other apps like many others. I tried in many different ways but it did not work

I should be able to download a program from the Microsoft web site that allows me to reinstall the store and other apps. There are thousands of people with my same problem. I cannot spend so much time looking on the web for solutions that do not help. I
do not want to reinstall Windows and reinstall all the programs. The thing that surprises me the most is that so many people would use the store apps but but they can't. Microsoft must be loosing millions not beeing able to sell apps to so many customers.

 

People app in Windows 10 doesn't show any contacts

A corrupted system file related to the People app can cause this issue. Before reinstalling the app, we suggest that you run

the System File Checker tool. This utility allows users to scan for corruptions in Windows system files and restore corrupted files.

If the issue persists, you may reinstall the People app from Windows Store.

Let us know how it goes for us to assist you further.

 

Have you tried clearing the store cache?
Store Cache - Clear and Reset in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

You probably know modern apps do not use the registry, so I suppose if you can find all traces - or the relevant ones- you could manually clean up a corrupted app.

However there is also this:
Run the troubleshooter for Windows apps - Windows Help -

 

Hi Alex,

I had the same problem. It is a Windows bug.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-performance/the-december-windows-update-broke-my-photos-and/d464c0c1-b3b9-44b4-aeb7-77b946aa1950?tm=1450418854351

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-performance/windows-10-apps-have-disappeared/c7a2c58e-e51e-4d79-80b0-b23e0580fdc1

Azure'

 

@azure12: Alexberry is reporting one app affected, rather than a whole bunch, albeit I suppose it could be some people have some symptoms, others another. I've not noted anything other than a rather obscure problem related to a jpg assocation, but that occurred before that update.
@alexberry- so what happens if you hide and uninstall that update?
Note - you would need to stop it reinstalling, else it could reappear very quickly, e.g on restart.
Windows Updates - Hide or Show in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

 

@dalchina:
Thanks for the reply. In the end, I restored the PC to an earlier point which brought all the apps back to their working state. (The People App problem also affected the calculator and store apps too in the end.) With everything back and working, I let the update run its course and it all seemed to be OK. Although... At first, the reliability monitor reported that an update to the People app failed to install, and it stopped working again. This time though I left it all alone for a couple of hours, and when returned the PC had sorted itself out.

I wonder whether I'm guilty of looking too hard too quickly for problems sometimes. I should stop looking at reliability monitors, events logs etc etc and just let the PC do its own thing. I have definitely had a hardware problem (BSODs, freezing etc) since installing Win10 on a brand new home-build PC with a PCIe WiFi card - it has never worked properly, and made me rather nervous of the new PC and Windows 10 in particular, especially after my previous home-build ran so smoothly on Windows 7. Anyway, I finally took the WiFi card out of the PC and I just use the ethernet connection built into the motherboard. The PC is basically fine like this and reasonably stable.

Going back to earlier problem, I saw one suggestion is to delete user profile, recreate your login as a local user and then reconvert the user back to Microsoft login. I have a feeling this might be a solution, because I was able to create a local user and it didn't have the symptoms I had on my primary login. I didn't realise there's a way to delete your profile, though, and start afresh that way. I might give it a go later, just to see what happens.

Thanks again, and apologies for the rambling response.

 

Quite understand your concerns- and some sort of reversion was the right approach. The difficulty being once having had such an update fail like that, without knowing why, there's no guarantee it will work if attempted again.

The trouble is, by virtue of the many vulnerabilities and weaknesses apparent in Win 10, MS is breeding suspicion and distrust. One of the difficulties is we're dealing now with an entity subject to constant change. Automatic updates, a scheduled task that runs every 4 hours to see if modern apps need updating (I'll probably change that!). I've noted that sometimes there's a lot of processing going on if I revert to an earlier disk image after logging on- so much so I just have to wait. From what I can see, it's both apps updating and Bitdefender updating. Never been so aware of that before.

Add to that MS taking control of many drivers which might lead to instability for a %ge of its users (and evidently does), and the more arcane ways Cortana and the start menu etc can be induced to fail, only the most determined of users will be able to cope with such problems. Hopefully here we see a small %ge of users - this is after all meant to be a consumer product. We're not meant to spend 90% of our time fixing our PCs!

My view: I'm using it as a straight desktop with Classic Shell- the Win 10 menu can't express a traditional start menu properly, unless it's very simple. I'm not relying on modern apps, just checking from time to time there's no glaring problem. And disk imaging..

I had several problems initially with an upgrade, and just one missing driver on a clean install, 64 bits, on a 6 year-old laptop. The Nov. upgrade caused the usual issues with file associations and system restore.

Now that apps can't set their own default associations, that's become a bigger issue when they are not listed as one of the ones you can select as default (many aren't). Another area ripe for confusion- and there are some threads where people report they can't set defaults successfully.

But for me, otherwise it's been quite stable. Just one obscure issue recently with a corrupted jpg file association which led to icons blinking when I had a jpg in an explorer window.

Wifi has been an issue for some- at least one card- Qualcomm 9000 series if I recall- doesn't seem compatible.

When in doubt- act defensively. When confident- act defensively. Back up and use disk imaging...