Windows 10: Photos app not working

I noticed the photos app got an update in the last day or so. Whilst it works fine on my user account my wife and son's user account it refuses to launch. Just does nothing. Is there an easy way to fix without that risky powershell cmd making things worse?

:)

 

Photos app not working

I keep receiving this message after I try to open the "Photos" app. The photos open fine in other apps but when I use this one it reads "Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the
item"

 

Photos app not working

Thank you for the additional information on this matter. Kindly run the
Windows App troubleshooter and check if there are any changes.

If the issue persists, kindly perform these troubleshooting to troubleshoot and to further isolate this matter:

Update your drivers.

To know how to update your drivers, click
here.

Run SFC Scan.  

SFC
will
scan
and
run
an
automatic repair
to any
corrupted system files
that it will detect. We suggest that you perform it thrice. To run an
SFC scan, follow these steps:  

• 
  Run
  Command Prompt as Administrator.  
  
• 
  Type
  sfc /scannow
  and hit
  Enter.   
  

Run DISM Tool.  

DISM Tool
will repair any corrupted system image files or the
system files
using
Windows Update.

• 
  Run
  Command Prompt as Administrator.  
  
• 
  Type the following command:  
  
  • 
    DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /scanhealth  
    
  • 
    DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth  
    

NOTE:
This might take a while to finish scanning.
Do not cancel.

Kindly provide us the return message so that we can investigate this matter thoroughly.

Regards.

 

Is there another photos app out there that supports the live tiles? It's funny as the live tile on the other user accounts works, you can see the photos changing. It just won't launch! I went into store under their accounts. Even though photos is installed it had the 'free' box, as if it wasn't installed. So I clicked it, it downloaded, acquired license etc but it still didn't work after that.

EDIT

I gave up on the photos app. It works in my account. Maybe a future update to windows or to the app itself will get it working again. In meantime I downloaded for the other users 'Gallery HD' which does much the same as the native app except I cannot find an option to allow for printing. In any case I downloaded Picasa desktop app which gives all that functionality. So I guess I'll just forget the native app.

The MS store is flakey when it comes to updating native apps. It's pretty Russian roulette. I don't know what it does but it obviously tries to update for all user accounts and is prone to breaking. Seems your reasonably safe on your own user account. Although I do notice the native apps sometimes have trouble updating. I found a few of them stuck not downloading and had to cancel the downloads and then try them manually again where upon they worked. Camera, People were another couple of apps done in last day or two. They got stuck too but luckily when they installed their functionality was ok in the other user accounts. So god knows what happened to photos. MS should make it easy to uninstall a native app just like the non native apps so you have the opportunity to try and redownload it again. Pretty frustrating

 

So I created an additional user account as a test and the photos app worked fine. So the problem is user account specific. Just thought I'd add that. If anyone has any pearls of wisdom let me know - unfortunately I don't trust the powershell related fixes having read some horror stories relating to these!

of course I could delete those user accounts and create new ones but I am fed up with doing that and having to get them all back setup. I have had to do it before due to another store related issue. And of course I don't think it's going to be the last time as I can see the issue occurring again. It boils down to the fact that MS needs to provide an easy way to uninstall/reinstall native apps like photos and to be able to do it easily at user account level without disrupting other accounts