Error 0xc0000409 initializing SDK in packaged app on Windows 10

[triplef]

Using Windows App SDK 1.1.5 in our packaged app, initializing the DeploymentManager fails with error 0xc0000409 when launching the app on Windows 10 machines that don’t have any Windows App SDK packages installed (tested on 4 different machines running Windows versions 21H2 or 22H2). EventViewer shows that DeploymentAgent.exe is crashing with the same exception code (c0000409), which seems to mean STATUS_STACK_BUFFER_OVERRUN.

We initialize the SDK as follows on launch:

if (appHasPackageIdentity()) {
	DeploymentInitializeOptions deploymentOptions;
	auto deploymentResult{ DeploymentManager::Initialize(deploymentOptions) };
	if (deploymentResult.Status() != DeploymentStatus::Ok) {
		const HRESULT hr{ deploymentResult.ExtendedError().value };
		wprintf(L"Error 0x%X initializing Windows App SDK\n", hr);
		return hr;
	}
}

Here is the WER report from the DeploymentAgent crash: Report.wer.txt

The same app works fine when installed on Windows 11 machines that don’t have any Windows App SDK packages installed:

1. Installing the app MSIX will automatically install the "Microsoft.WindowsAppRuntime.1.1" package
2. When the app is launched, the Main and Singleton packages get installed as well (not the DDLM package, but I think that’s not required for packaged apps).

Any ideas as to why this might not be working on Windows 10?

Note that we manually integrate the Windows App SDK into our Qt project as described here. Following is the dependency on WindowsAppRuntime we’re using in our AppxManifest:

<PackageDependency Name="Microsoft.WindowsAppRuntime.1.1" MinVersion="1005.616.1651.0" Publisher="CN=Microsoft Corporation, O=Microsoft Corporation, L=Redmond, S=Washington, C=US" />

[triplef]

We found that installing the Windows App SDK from here fixes the issue:
https://learn.microsoft.com/de-de/windows/apps/windows-app-sdk/downloads

Running get-appxpackage micro*win*appruntime* prior to running the installer showed that only the "Microsoft.WindowsAppRuntime.1.1" package was installed. After running the installer it also shows the Main, Singleton, and DDLM packages to be installed, which fixes the issue.

It was my understanding that calling DeploymentManager::Initialize() should install any additional required packages, but this doesn’t seem to be working here.

The issue is reproducible with the app getting installed either via MSIX and MS Store.

[triplef]

After upgrading to the Windows App SDK v1.2, the deployment status returned is 0x80070005, which might be ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED.

However the underlying symptom of DeploymentAgent.exe crashing is the same: Report-v1.2.wer.txt

We now reproduced this on 4 separate machines all running Windows 10.

[triplef]

I’ve created the following bug report from this:

DeploymentAgent.exe crashing when calling DeploymentManager::Initialize() on Windows 10 (#3137)