Windows 10: All my Apps stop working when I added and logged into a 2nd account!

[Sir Arun]

I bought a new laptop for myself and my mom wants to occasionally use it too, so we need two accounts for my stuff and her stuff.

When I first set up the PC, I set up a local account (administrator privileges) under just my first name, just like things used to be in Windows 7 and prior.

Then I wanted to set up an account for my mom, under her first name. The thing is, Windows 10 asks for a Microsoft account, i.e. an e-mail address, so basically I made a mistake and gave her e-mail address and set it up (also admin). I then realized only her e-mail address is displayed instead of her name, which is annoying. At this point I'd like to mention I had made a restore point.

So when I logged into her account for the first time, it changed to her full name (as registered in her microsoft account), which makes it look better, but I was bugged that I couldnt edit out her last name. However, this is not the main issue.

The main issue is, after I logged in to her account, and the set up screens showed up ("Hi", "Getting things ready" etc.) I thought all was fine and logged out again. Then I logged back into my own account.

And guess what? All the microsoft apps (Windows Store apps, I guess) no longer work in mine:

For example, the Calculator doesn't work, the Mail app doesnt work, the Alarms & Clock doesnt work, the maps app doesnt work, the windows store doesnt open, and when I double click a picture, I get "the remote procedure call failed" error, so the picture viewer doesnt work either.

What the hell is going on? I restarted but my apps still did not work (interestingly, they did on her account).

I did a system restore to the point BEFORE I had logged into her account the first time, and lo and behold all my apps were functional again.

Seriously what the heck?

Right now this means I can scrap the idea of having an additional account on the laptop, as when someone logs in, it messes up my account's apps.

Please help, I don't want to do a clean reinstall of Windows as I spent many days installing so many programs on my account and all of them otherwise work fine.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Can you not set up her account as a local account also? If you do that, I would hope MS would still allow you to use their "apps" as you used to, otherwise it's time to find a better operating system.

 

[Sir Arun]

In the meanwhile I have tried several permutations, always using my restore point as starting position.

1) tried it with her microsoft account: logged in for the first time, watched the greeting text, then looked around in her desktop, everything checks out, her apps were working, logged out, logged back into my own account and my apps werent working

2) Removed her microsoft account, restarted to make sure, set up a local account for her, same procedure as above, same issue.

3) Basically the same as 2) but also deleted the C: \Users\[Her name]\ folder to make sure everything was gone before creating a new account. Same issue.

 

[UsandThem]

I'm not sure what would cause those issues outside of how you must have configured the profiles. It might be from you setting up the profile account as a Microsoft account instead of a local account.

For example, I have 3 desktops and 4 laptops which all have Windows 10 on them. They all have a local admin account (me) and each one also has a local standard user account for the person using it.

When I log into any of the accounts, all the apps and programs work. Depending on the program, sometimes the admin password is required the for some programs to run on the standard account (like Samsung Magician or other utilities).

 

[XavierMace]

All my Win 10 PC's are setup using either Microsoft accounts or Domain accounts. No issues with that here.

How specifically did you create these accounts?

 

[Sir Arun]

I tried another permutation, which is to NOT make her account an admin account but a standard account instead, so did that, logged in, logged out and back into mine, and same situation....except this time the calculator, alarm and maps worked but the store did not and I still get the "remote procedure call failed" error for the picture viewer.

Obviously, the thing I do next is do a system restore to the point before I logged in to her account for the first time, and after I do the restore, my stuff works again but I am exactly where I started.

 

[Sir Arun]

How specifically did you create these accounts?

I created mine when I first unboxed my laptop and booted it (it asked for my information and since I didnt remember my microsoft account credentials at the time, I set up my account as a local one)

I initially created hers a week or so later while logged into my local account (has admin privileges) using the Settings > Family & Users > Other Users > + Add someone else to this PC

At this point I like to mention I use a cleaner tool called Advanced System Care by Iobit that, among other things, cleans my registry. I hope using that didnt somehow mess things up in my registry.

I did try the sfc /scannow command and everything was normal, no errors detected.

I googled a bit about apps not working and one popular solution was to copy paste some code into the windows power shell. I tried that once (I can always system restore so no damange is done) and I got a lot of RED text meaning something messed up and obviously it didnt fix the problem.