These Windows 10 apps are crashing. Have you figured it out yet?

Windows 10 apps like Photos, Calendar, Calculator, Mail & Calendar, and Feedback Hub are crashing with “File system error (-2147219196)”. Microsoft states that the company is aware of the reports and has identified the cause. However, the good news is that the technology giant is already preparing a fix, which should be available on the Microsoft Store soon.

These Windows 10 apps are crashing. Have you figured it out yet?

What went wrong? According to reports on Feedback Hub and Microsoft forums, Microsoft automatically updated its inbox apps through its store on January 23rd. Although the updates were supposed to be regular maintenance releases, they killed some apps.

According to reports that the WindowsLatest website received from users, these applications fail immediately if they start with a “File system error” error message. This error appears to only affect older hardware, such as AMD Athlon, Intel Quad and Core 2 Duo processors, which were on the market in the early 2000s.

File system error (-2147219196)

So the cause of the problem lies within a critical package, “vclibs framework”, used by several applications. This package contains libraries that help Microsoft Inbox apps, such as Photos and Calculator, work correctly.

Recently, a change to the vclibs structure caused these applications to inadvertently require SSE4.2 instructions.

As Wikipedia says, SSE has existed for decades. But version SSE4.2 arrived much later, in 2011, and is not supported by older processors. SSE4.2 helps a computer’s processor handle data more efficiently, which leads to better performance when opening applications.

Microsoft accidentally made SSE4.2 a mandatory requirement for the vclibs framework. As a result, Windows 10 PCs with older processors that do not support SSE4.2 are unable to launch applications:

• Photos
• Calculator
• Mail and calendar
• Film and TV (also known as Movies and TV)
• Feedback Center
• Paint 3D
• 3D Viewer
• Game bar

However this is due to the fact that older processors cannot handle or execute the SSE4.2 instructions for applications, which are now “accidentally” required by the vclibs structure.

In a statement, Microsoft’s support team confirmed that it is aware of the issue and that new application packages containing the fix will begin to be released through the Windows Store in the coming hours.

It’s important to note that these processors are not officially supported, but some people still run Windows 10 on them.