windows 8 apps won’t open

Topic

New Reply

Today some of my windows 8 apps started acting strangely (in windows 8.1). When I click on certain of the tiles, the app starts to open and then reverts to the start screen. Apparently the app is still partly open, because when I move the mouse to the upper left corner, the thumbnail of it appears. If I click on it, I get the opening screen (the colored one with just the logo), and then it clicks back to the start screen, and the app never completely opens. I first noticed this with Microsoft Solitaire collection, so I uninstalled it and reinstalled it, and now it works fine. However, the same behavior is exhibited by several of the other apps, such as Travel, Finance, and New York Times. Reading List also acted like this for a short time and now is working ok. Rebooting the computer didn’t help. Any idea what’s going on?

Fafner

Reply | Quote

Replies

Fafner,

I’d head over the the MS Store and update all your apps to make sure you have the latest versions. HTH :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

Reply | Quote

Probably the easiest way out is to install any misbehaving apps again, since a reboot didn’t fix it. From time to time, I get one app not responding, but a reboot usually fixes it. You can also try to kill the rogue apps from Task Manager and then try to restart them. It solves some problems, sometimes.

One of the things that annoys me in 8.1 is apps not closing when you drag them down, as it happened with 8.0. Not sure why they did this, doesn’t seem a smart thing to do.

Reply | Quote

In windows 8.1, as opposed to 8, the apps keep themselves updated, and manual updating isn’t an option. Closing them with task manager doesn’t help, either. They still don’t open. It seems I have the option to uninstall and reinstall them, but why did so many of them start doing this all at once?

Fafner

Reply | Quote

In windows 8.1, as opposed to 8, the apps keep themselves updated, and manual updating isn’t an option. Closing them with task manager doesn’t help, either. They still don’t open. It seems I have the option to uninstall and reinstall them, but why did so many of them start doing this all at once?

Fafner

With the store open go to the charms bar and select settings and then “app updates”. You can manually check for app updates there. You can also turn off automatic app updating there. If you turn automatic updating off it reverts to the Windows 8.0 method of notifying you via the store tile that updates are available.

Joe

--Joe

Reply | Quote

Joe, thanks for this tip. I think I knew that but forgot it. However, the strange behavior of some of my apps still stands. I am able to fix by uninstalling and reinstalling, but the geek in me wants to know why this (i.e. failing to open) is happening to so many of my apps.

Fafner

Reply | Quote

One of the things that annoys me in 8.1 is apps not closing when you drag them down, as it happened with 8.0. Not sure why they did this, doesn’t seem a smart thing to do.

Rui, once you drag the app to the bottom of the screen to close it, are you holding it there until the icon changes? Don’t understand why Microsoft made this additional change to make closing an app just a little more difficult. They do claim closing apps is not necessary because they supposedly release resources when not active but some of us prefer to be sure .

Jerry

Reply | Quote

Unfortunately I don’t have an answer for that. You can try and open an elevated command prompt and run sfc /scannow and see if it helps.

Reply | Quote

I had the impression that when doing that, the process wouldn’t disappear from the list of running processes. I had tried it before, but it seems I wasn’t patient enough to wait the necessary time for the process to die. I tried it now, while I was replying here and I confirm the process does die, but it seems it is a slow death :).

Thanks for making me have a look at that again.

Reply | Quote

Have you looked at the Windows Event logs?

Joe

--Joe

Reply | Quote

There’s an error report in the Event logs for each time I tried and failed to open one of the apps. To pick one at random (they all have similar details):

Faulting application name: wwahost.exe, version: 6.3.9600.16384, time stamp: 0x521571bd
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 6.3.9600.16408, time stamp: 0x523d45f2
Exception code: 0x00000004
Fault offset: 0x00011aa0
Faulting process id: 0x1b00
Faulting application start time: 0x01cef364ebf8038c
Faulting application path: C:WINDOWSsystem32wwahost.exe
Faulting module path: C:WINDOWSsystem32KERNELBASE.dll
Report Id: 29ae18c8-5f58-11e3-afe8-0019d179608c
Faulting package full name: Microsoft.BingFinance_3.0.1.299_x86__8wekyb3d8bbwe

Fafner

Reply | Quote

Several days after my last post, the problem has become worse. Before, I could fix the apps by uninstalling them and then reinstalling them. This no longer works. After reinstallation, they still won’t open. The opening logo screen appears for a moment, then the app closes. It still seems to be running in the background, because it shows up in Task Manager, but there is no way to open it so it appears on the screen. Has anyone else seen this problem?

Fafner

Reply | Quote

Try the apps trouble shooter. The link to it is in the first paragraph on this page:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/what-troubleshoot-problems-app

Jerry

Reply | Quote

Thanks, Jerry. I ran the troubleshooter. It says it detected problems, but the apps still don’t work. The text of the troubleshooter message is as follows:

The troubleshooter made some changes to your system. Try attempting the task you were trying to do before.

Problems found
Some security settings are missing or have been changed. Detected

(When I mouse-over the last line, a pop-up reads, “Some apps might not have access to the required sources.” When I click on More Details, the message says that security settings were reset. No other problems were found.)

I should also say that the apps that don’t work are all Bing apps: News, Finance, and Travel. Other installed apps have either been repaired successfully by reinstalling or have always worked.

Fafner

Reply | Quote

Having the exact same issue. Just the Bing apps at this point. I had not run any Microsoft updates since getting my Pro 2 a couple months ago. Recently I installed all the updates and went through the torrid of issues that others encountered as well. I researched through all of them (wifi not working, plug-in devices not working, not being able to boot or restart, etc). Then I got the point where the only remaining issue was that some apps wouldn’t open but after uninstalling and reinstalling, they worked… except for Bing apps. So now I’m at the mercy of those that know much more than my novice self.

Fafner, same boat and hope someone can assist. If you figure it out on your own, please share.

I do find it ironic that it is the Bing apps that are failing.

Thanks, Terry

Reply | Quote

Terry, did you try uninstalling and then reinstalling the Bing apps?

Jerry

Reply | Quote

Jerry – Multiple times with reboots and even tried to use the powershell method of removing the apps but that method didn’t work. Running RemoveWindowsStoreApp.ps1 via PowerShell would show the list of apps but regardless of which id(s) were entered, the same error would pop up and the PowerShell would close. The error was “you can not call a method on a null value expression).

I restored to the factory settings and the apps worked. As soon as I did all the available windows updates, the Bing apps stopped working. I’ve tried just about every tip available on the web to this point aside from the PowerShell removal of the apps because I can’t get that to work properly.

Thanks, Terry

Reply | Quote

After reading all of the above, I wonder if reverting back to Windows 8.0 wouldn’t be the easiest way to solve all of this.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

Reply | Quote

What I’m going to do until they fix this crap is restore 8.1, turn off automatic updates for windows and not take any of the windows updates. Applying the updates caused multiple problems that took hours to research and fix. Still no permanent fix found for Bing apps apparently. The other option is to not use Bing apps and find viable/possibly better replacements.

In all my looking around to fix issues I saw a statement that made a good point. “Microsoft has never provided a completed operating system. There is constant patching and fixing for every version.”.

Thanks, Terry

Reply | Quote

”Microsoft has never provided a completed operating system. There is constant patching and fixing for every version.”.

I’m not sure if it’s humanly possible to provide a “completed” operating system, because there will always be smart people out there trying to crack it.

But they could have done much better in one way, in my opinion. They could have designed Windows to be server-centric, not client-centric, from the ground up. In fact, they could do that with each new version of Windows. But in my opinion, that has never occurred to the higher-ups at Microsoft, and that’s why there is so much client-centric code in Windows.

I’m not sure how that may help you with your current situation; but it did feel good to get it off of my chest! :coffeetime:

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

Reply | Quote