Microsoft offers up strange solution for 0x80073CFA errors in Windows 10

It was Einstein who said, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Indicative of insanity or not, repeating the same actions over and over is what Microsoft suggests as a solution to a Windows 10 issue.

A few days ago, the company acknowledged a problem that means users might be unable to update or uninstall packaged apps on Windows 10. The issue stems from the WinAppSDK 1.6.2 package and results in a 0x80073CFA error. There is more than one fix, one of which is odd.

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When Microsoft acknowledged the problem, it posted on the Windows release health page: “Starting November 12, 2024, Windows 10 users might experience issues while trying to update or uninstall packaged apps. Affected Windows 10 devices have received the WinAppSDK 1.6.2 package (published on November 12, 2024)”.

The company goes on to explain:

When users download an app that relies on WinAppSDK, the necessary components of the SDK are automatically downloaded and installed along with the app.

Resulting from this issue, you might observe that Microsoft Store displays the error message, ‘Something happened on our end’ in the ‘Downloads’ panel.

If you are an IT administrator trying to manage packaged apps through PowerShell using ‘Get-AppxPackage’ command you might observe the error ‘Deployment failed with HRESULT: 0x80073CFA’, ‘Please contact your software vendor. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80073CFA’) in PowerShell.

You will also notice that apps like Microsoft Teams and other 3rd party apps are impacted if you choose to uninstall and re-install the apps as part of the update process.

The simplest solution -- and one that should work for most people -- is to install the Windows updates released November 21, 2024 (KB5046714) and later.

The other solution suggested by Microsoft on GitHub is to install the new WinAppSDK 1.6.3 three times (yep, thrice). There are x64 and arm64 versions available.

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