Application not found during uninstall or update but is on list of updateable programs

[G0rocks]

Brief description of your issue

I tried to update OpenCPN.OpenCPN from version 5.8.4 to version 5.10.2 and got the "Application not found" error

Steps to reproduce

Run either
winget update opencpn

or
winget uninstall opencpn

With opencpn installed on your machine.

Expected behavior

opencpn either gets updated or uninstalled depending on which command you tried

Actual behavior

For the update command:

>winget update opencpn
Found OpenCPN [OpenCPN.OpenCPN] Version 5.10.2
This application is licensed to you by its owner.
Microsoft is not responsible for, nor does it grant any licenses to, third-party packages.
Downloading https://github.com/OpenCPN/OpenCPN/releases/download/Release_5.10.2/opencpn_5.10.2-0+2012.12e5712_setup.exe
  ██████████████████████████████  36.3 MB / 36.3 MB
Successfully verified installer hash
Starting package uninstall...
An unexpected error occurred while executing the command:
0x800401f5 : Application not found

For the uninstall command:

>winget uninstall opencpn
Found OpenCPN 5.8.4-0+1637c28 [OpenCPN.OpenCPN]
Starting package uninstall...
An unexpected error occurred while executing the command:
0x800401f5 : Application not found

Note also that running winget update resulted in

>winget update
Name                    Id              Version              Available           Source
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OpenCPN 5.8.4-0+1637c28 OpenCPN.OpenCPN 5.8.4                5.10.2              winget
Microsoft Teams         Microsoft.Teams 25163.3611.3774.6315 25185.410.3812.8024 winget
3 upgrades available.

The following packages have an upgrade available, but require explicit targeting for upgrade:
Name    Id              Version  Available Source
-------------------------------------------------
Discord Discord.Discord 1.0.9144 1.0.9201  winget
1 package(s) have version numbers that cannot be determined. Use --include-unknown to see all results.

Finally note that opening the windows settings and uninstalling opencpn from there worked flawlessly and after that I could run winget install opencpn to get the latest version

Environment

winget --info
Windows Package Manager v1.11.430
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Windows: Windows.Desktop v10.0.19045.6093
System Architecture: X64
Package: Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller v1.26.430.0

Winget Directories
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Logs                               %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\DiagOutputDir
User Settings                      %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\settings.json
Portable Links Directory (User)    %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\WinGet\Links
Portable Links Directory (Machine) C:\Program Files\WinGet\Links
Portable Package Root (User)       %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\WinGet\Packages
Portable Package Root              C:\Program Files\WinGet\Packages
Portable Package Root (x86)        C:\Program Files (x86)\WinGet\Packages
Installer Downloads                %USERPROFILE%\Downloads
Configuration Modules              %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\WinGet\Configuration\Modules

Links
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Privacy Statement   https://aka.ms/winget-privacy
License Agreement   https://aka.ms/winget-license
Third Party Notices https://aka.ms/winget-3rdPartyNotice
Homepage            https://aka.ms/winget
Windows Store Terms https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/storedocs/terms-of-sale

Admin Setting                             State
--------------------------------------------------
LocalManifestFiles                        Disabled
BypassCertificatePinningForMicrosoftStore Disabled
InstallerHashOverride                     Disabled
LocalArchiveMalwareScanOverride           Disabled
ProxyCommandLineOptions                   Disabled
DefaultProxy                              Disabled

[denelon]

I was able to reproduce the error using WinGet.

Then I used winget show to get the installer URL and downloaded it and ran it using the "interactive" installer.

That did work, and I saw some interesting switches based on me just using default for the installer.

Then I went to look at the manifest and saw the default upgrade behavior is set to uninstall previous. So my next course of action was to "attempt" to uninstall OpenCPN (using WinGet) where I got this failure:

I ran the command again with verbose logs.

WinGet-2025-07-30-10-35-23.676.log

Then I went to Windows Settings -> Apps -> Installed apps to perform a manual uninstall. It failed.

I suspect the problem is either with the OpenCPN installer or uninstaller.

@Trenly or @mdanish-kh would either of you have any better ideas or be able to sanity check me?

[denelon]

I filed an issue over at OpenCPN so others can follow.

[leamas]

The official installation instructions can be found in the user manual. They do not include the use of winget.

Furthermore, the update offered by winget is outdated, current version is 5.12.0

What happens if you follow the instructions?

[mdanish-kh]

@denelon - It looks like WinGet is having trouble actually even before calling the uninstaller. I looked at the source code, and it seems like the error is coming from this Shell API call, which is WinGet sanity checking the UninstallString retrieved from Registry before calling the uninstaller

winget-cli/src/AppInstallerCLICore/Workflows/ShellExecuteInstallerHandler.cpp

Line 325 in e000353

THROW_IF_FAILED(SHEvaluateSystemCommandTemplate(commandUtf16.c_str(), &app, NULL, &args));

I was under the impression, as seen in the similar issue where this error was thrown: #2171, that this call fails when the uninstaller mentioned in the Registry UninstallString (example: "C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenCPN\Uninstall 5.10.2-0+12e5712.exe /S") does not exist. However, this is failing here for some unknown reason because the uninstaller exists at the correct location on my machine, just that WinGet is never able to call it because of this Shell API failure.

---

As a temporary fix (because the issue is with uninstall), we can remove UpgradeBehavior: uninstallPrevious from the manifest, and let WinGet do a side-by-side install. The user will have multiple versions installed on their machine, and to remove the previous version, they'll have to use Apps&Features instead of WinGet, but this still feels like a better UX than just failing the upgrade outright.

[mdanish-kh]

btw this may not be Area-External, since directly invoking the uninstaller by the Registry UninstallString succeeds, so feels like an issue with WinGet uninstall flow

[Policy] Command-Uninstall

[denelon]

@JohnMcPMS any ideas on this one?