Windows Essentials 2012 will reach end of support on January 10th 2017

Kari said:

I had to clean install yesterday, was hoping I would still get Photo Gallery and Movie Maker as I had saved the offline installer. However, it's dead now:

Attachment 130835


EDIT:

I posted too early! Although installer gave the error message shown in screenshot, to my surprise I found Movie Maker and Photo Gallery now in Start Menu. Both work perfectly.

Strange!

Same error for me on a clean install, the programs do install & gallery/movie maker works but Mail doesn't as I receive a further error message. I'm using the inbuilt email app of Win 10.

DavidY said:

Yes I think @Bree found the same thing over in this thread:
Creators Update - Discussion of new changes and quirks

Yes. For completeness my test results should be recorded on this thread. It is interesting to note that the install now fails on 1607 too. It would appear that whatever makes the install fail is a recent patch common to all versions, rather than anything specifically new in 1703.

My main concern was for Movie Maker, as most of the other packages have reasonable alternatives available. Mail in particular was long in the tooth and apparently required workarounds long before support was ended.

The offline installer appears to fail on various different files, but they all seem to be part of the common part of Essentials that make it 'Live', not the individual packages themselves. The offline installer appears to contain individual installers for each package which run to completion before returning to the main installer, hence Movie Maker installs, but the package as a whole fails. It appears to be possible to install all the packages by running the installer multiple times, each time selecting only one package.

Movie Maker/Gallery appears to be the only one that's fully functional. Writer fails to start. Mail starts, but reports errors in it's core services. Messenger appears to start OK. As I don't use Mail or Messenger I haven't tested beyond opening them, I suspect they will not function correctly without the 'Live' common packages.

With any or all packages installed, the uninstall appears to run successfully to completion without error.

Bottom Line: A fully functional Movie Maker can still be installed, despite the installer reporting otherwise. It may well be the end of the line for the other packages.

Bree said:

My main concern was for Movie Maker, as most of the other packages have reasonable alternatives available.

That was my main concern, too, although I have found a pretty good alternative for Movie Maker: Shotcut, open source and completely free.

I took the plunge and deleted Windows Essentials completely before doing the creators upgrade.

I get the error message (although WLE will be installed) in 15063, no error message in 16193.