Music and Skype Apps Crash on Windows 8.1

16 Nov 2013

Recently, I upgraded from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 Enterprise N. Since then, I had some issues with a few of my apps.

Since ditching Spotify's awful iTunes inspired app in favour of software that works, the Windows Music app has become one of my most frequently used and favourite inclusions with Windows 8. After the upgrade to 8.1, I found that any media related app was crashing immediately after start-up.

The following event log entry was the first clue:

Error status code 0xC000007B returned when C:\WINDOWS\system32\wwahost.exe attempted to load dependency MFReadWrite.dll.

The file MFReadWrite.dll did not exist on my system, however it is included as part of Microsoft's Media Feature Pack for N and KN versions of Windows 8.1. I installed this update and rebooted my system as instructed.

Now, the app would start up, but some issue with rendering the home UI was causing it again to crash. To fix this:

Take ownership of C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\AppRepository
Delete all XML files that start with Microsoft.ZuneMusic in the file name
Uninstall the Music app
Reinstall the Music app from the Store

Fixed!