Fix: Windows 10 Calculator Not Working

The calculator in your Windows 10 might fail to work primarily because of problems with your registry files or your user account may be conflicting with User Account Control (UAC).

UAC aims to improve the security of the OS by limiting application software to standard user privileges until the user is granted access by the administrator. In this way, some applications won’t be able to launch by some other user. We listed down a number of fixes reported by our community. Take a look.

Solution 1: Reinstalling Calculator

Most of the Windows in-built applications allow uninstalling option directly from their properties. However, applications like Calculator don’t have such an option. We can uninstall such applications with a PowerShell cmdlet. This trick is also limited and won’t allow you to uninstall other important applications like Microsoft Edge or Cortana.

1. Type PowerShell in the dialogue box of your start menu. Right-click on the first result and select “Run as administrator”.

2. Now copy paste this line into PowerShell and hit enter.

Get-AppxPackage *windowscalculator* | Remove-AppxPackage

3. Your Windows Calculator will now be uninstalled.
4. Now we will enter a command which will re-install all the default Windows applications. If they some are already installed, it will skip them and move on to the next. Copy and paste the next line in your Windows PowerShell and hit enter.

Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers| Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}

5. If you are not comfortable with installing all the Windows default applications using PowerShell (step 4), you can always reinstall calculator using Windows store after uninstalling it.

Solution 2: Making a new user account

It is possible that your account doesn’t meet the requirements as set by the UAC to access the calculator. UAC is also known as User Access Control. It is an infrastructure developed by Microsoft. It ensures that only users trusted with using applications can access them. Only certain users can get administrative privileges to keep malware off the system. If you have a limited account in a computer and also can’t access the calculator, it means there is a conflict with UAC.

You can ask the administrator to make you a new account or if you access to the administrative account, you make a new one yourself. We can guide you on how to make a new account so all the account settings in the new will be the same as your current account. This way you won’t feel any difference and also get to run the calculator perfectly.

1. Open an administrator account. Type Settings in the start menu dialogue box and click on Accounts.

2. Now click “Family and other users” options present at the left side of the window.
3. Once inside select the menu, select “Add someone else to this PC”.

4. Now Windows will guide you through its wizard on how to create a new account. When the new window comes forth, click “I don’t have this person’s sign-in information”.

5. Now select the option “Add a user without Microsoft” whenWindows prompts you to make a new Microsoft account and display a window like this.

6. Enter all the details and chose an easy password which you can remember.
7. Now navigate to Settings > Accounts > Your Account.
8. At the space beneath your account picture, you will see an option which says “Sign in with local account instead”.
9. Enter your current password when the prompt comes and click on Next.
10. Now enter username and password for your local account and click on “Sign out and finish”.
11. Now you can easily switch to a new local account, and move all your personal files to it without any barriers.
12. Now navigate to Settings > Accounts > Your Account and select the option “Sign in with a Microsoft Account instead”.

13. Enter your username and password and click Sign in.

14. Now you can safely delete your old account and continue using this one. Check if your calculator got fixed.

Solution 3: Deleting complete Windows Calculator completely and then reinstalling

Sometimes, deregistering the application (uninstalling and installing) doesn’t completely remove the installation files. So when you install the Windows Calculator again, you think that you got new files from the Windows Store, but in reality, your OS is reinstalling the files that were already present on your PC.

We can use a trick where we activate an administrator account, grant you access, and then delete the installation files so you can download them again from the Windows Store.

1. First, we will enable the Administrator account. Run command prompt as an administrator and enter “net user Administrator /active:yes”
2. Now if you open your start menu and click on your profile icon, you will see a new administrator account present.

3. Open the account and navigate to Local disk C. Open the folder of “Program Files” and locate “WindowsApps”. If you can’t find WindowsApps, click on View present at the top of your file explorer window and check the box which says “Show hidden items”.
4. Now go to its Properties and grant full access to your account.
5. Now switch back to your account and navigate to Drive C > Program Files > WindowsApps
6. Now, look for every folder which says “WindowsCalculator”. For each of these folders, you need to go to their properties and change the ownership from SYSTEM to your user account. Then you can grant full access to your account.
7. Now delete all the folder which contains the keyword “WindowsCalculator”. You can now reinstall the calculator from the Windows Store.

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