This is one of those “you never know when the Devil is going to jump up and bite you for no good reason” stories that can happen to anyone, anytime, for any reason.  It certainly wound up giving me as much as I could handle for a few days.  It all revolves around a pair of error codes, 0x80073CF9 and 0x80073CFA.  The first is what you might receive from the Microsoft Store when it has an issue installing something, the second is when an un-install issue arises.  In both of these cases, the Store, itself, was a fault, but I didn’t know that…

Peaceful evening gone bad!

It started out fine, I was exploring the Answers forum as I often do when I noticed the tell-tale signs of installations happening on my Start menu – a number of the tiles were blacked out with install progress lines at the bottom…they just weren’t going anywhere. So, I opened the Store App and had a look.  There were about a half dozen Apps in various states of download/install and all were complaining about the same thing, error 0x80073CF9.  I had some success with several re-trying them, but a “Check for Updates” uninstalled them again.  I found an article with a number of corrective steps - How to Fix the Uninstallation Error 0x80073CFA in Windows 10 & 11, but nothing I tried here worked.

It got worse.

Suddenly, apps which weren’t an apparent part of the Store started failing, principally Teams.  That’s a problem, I attend Teams meetings almost daily.  Nothing really helped, I went so far as to try to uninstall it (Ox80073CFA) and re-install it with the downloaded installer.  No go, wouldn’t uninstall or re-install, just dead int e water.  Tried a System Restore, but it failed citing issues with the AppSDK system.  A second check showed it had somehow wiped out my old restore points in the process.

Where do I go from here?

I would be needing Teams the following day.  I suppose I’d be OK with just the Web clints, but I wasn’t sure that would work either, so, in my mind, I only had a few options.  First, I could upgrade to Windows 11.  The machine is capable, but would that solve the problem?  AS it turns out, it likely would have as I found an article with the same issues and the update solved the problem for the original poster.  I could also do a Windows 10 repair install, or I could install a backup from a few months back, which is what I ultimately did.  It did fix the issue, but it cost me a number of unsaved browser pages I had open for various things.

The article

This is what I found after reloading my system.  Again, the upgrade to Windows 11 likely would have fixed it for me, I just didn’t want Windows 11 yet.

New Outlook won't Open, Repair, Reset, or Uninstall after recent Skype - Microsoft Community. 

The article shows the same sets of errors appearing out of nowhere and the steps taken to correct it.  The long and short of it is A Microsoft Learn article describing the issue and the fix.  The article is Resolved issues in Windows 10, version 22H2 | Microsoft Learn.  The specific section - Users might be unable to update or uninstall packaged apps on Windows 10. 

The fix - 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). 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.

Please note, this issue is not caused by a Windows security or preview monthly update.

Resolution: This issue was resolved by Windows updates released November 21, 2024 (KB5046714), and later. We recommend you install the latest update for your device as it contains important improvements and issue resolutions, including this one.

Affected platforms:

Client: Windows 10, version 22

Conclusion

Life is better without bad updates.