Partner Center failures are all unknown, no crash dumps

[mqudsi]

Describe the bug

After switching from UAP/UWP to Windows App SDK and WinUI 3, I have (only) unknown failures in the "Health" insights in the Windows Partner Center analytics for my app, with no stack traces or (mini)dumps.

Is this a known issue/expected behavior or is there something I can do to change this? Note that I always include public pdb symbols for debugging when I generate my msixupload packages.

Steps to reproduce the bug

1. Create a Windows App SDK app (separate WinUI 3 app and package projects)
2. Submit to Windows Partner Center

Expected behavior

Some information should be visible in the Partner Center analytics

Screenshots

NuGet package version

Windows App SDK 1.7.0: 1.7.250310001

Packaging type

Packaged (MSIX)

Windows version

Windows 11 version 24H2 (22621, October 2024 Update)

IDE

Visual Studio 2022-preview

Additional context

Application is C#/.NET 9 with the following publish profile (pubxml):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!--
https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=208121.
-->
<Project>
  <PropertyGroup>
    <PublishProtocol>FileSystem</PublishProtocol>
    <Platform>x64</Platform>
    <RuntimeIdentifier>win-x64</RuntimeIdentifier>
    <PublishDir>bin\win-x64\publish\</PublishDir>
    <SelfContained>true</SelfContained>
    <PublishSingleFile>False</PublishSingleFile>
    <PublishReadyToRun>True</PublishReadyToRun>
    <PublishReadyToRunShowWarnings>True</PublishReadyToRunShowWarnings>
    <Configuration>Release</Configuration>
    <TargetFramework>net9.0-windows10.0.22621</TargetFramework>
  </PropertyGroup>
</Project>

[RDMacLachlan]

This appears to be similar to the following GitHub Issue:

• Partner Center reporting a bug for latest version of BuildTools #4480

[MartinZikmund]

@RDMacLachlan I think this is different - not related to a specific version of BuildTools, but rather a general issue concerning WinUI-based apps

[RDMacLachlan]

Hi @mqudsi and @MartinZikmund,

I want to check-in with you to see if the update from Partner Center last Friday has resolved this issue.

Thank you,
Roy

[catlan]

@RDMacLachlan Hi Roy, I selected "Last 72 hours" but still see no stack traces or (mini)dumps:

The one clickable link is from the old UAP.

2.x is Windows App SDK and WinUI 3
1.x is UAP.

Is there a better way to report this issue than this github issue?

[mqudsi]

@RDMacLachlan There is an improvement since Friday, for the first time I have something other than "Unknown". But 75% of crashes are still "Unknown" and the clickable link for the one non-Unknown takes me to a page with no additional information (no dumps, no stack traces).

Before:

After:

But clicking the coreclr_t::create text gives the following empty page:

2025-04-24.121949.partner.center.mp4

[JanRajnoha]

Is required any action? I have still "Unknown" error

[IpsitaChoudhary]

Hi @mqudsi, I'm part of Microsoft Store team. We investigated the issue and had some findings about "Unknowns".

Unknowns can happen due to 2 reasons:

1. Users have opted out of sharing cab files with us, so we cannot identify what the failure is.
2. We collect cab files from a subset of users (who have opted in to share optional diagnostic data). We do this sampling because collecting cab files from all users will have very high volume of data. We can resolve this to some extent by collecting cabs more aggressively from users who have opted in to share diagnostic data.

For your app, we tried the solution mentioned in #2. We are now seeing significant decrease in Unknowns (~30% failures are now Unknowns). Please let us know if this is helpful.

We did a similar exercise for @catlan's app too.

@JanRajnoha can you please share the ProductId and SellerId for your app? We can implement a similar solution for your app.

[JanRajnoha]

Hi @IpsitaChoudhary ,

here are IDs:
Seller ID: 79245840
Product IDs (Store IDs): 9NK95J9R26LK, 9P0N4FM4967R

[mqudsi]

@IpsitaChoudhary Thank you, it's much appreciated! I'll keep an eye on the errors; I'm actually preparing a new release now.

[mqudsi]

@IpsitaChoudhary @RDMacLachlan the more aggressive collection changed it so that there are stack traces available, but (and this is the part that I think is specific to non-UWP.NET apps w/ Windows App SDK) the stack traces all end in !unknown_function instead of having the correct symbols (even though symbols were uploaded):

This was for a "traditional" .NET 9 app with symbols uploaded at the time of publication, built against the Windows App SDK nuget package in Visual Studio 2022. I have just pushed an update that is .NET 9 with AOT (or at least it should be), but these errors predate the update and are not from an AOT build.