Unable to deploy UWP apps from Windows 7 to remote Windows 10 PC

Question

After updating to Visual Studio 2015 Update 3, I am unable to deploy my UWP apps from VS to remote Windows 10 devices.

When I build the solution, I get an error,

C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v14.0\AppxPackage\Microsoft.AppXPackage.Targets(2156,5): error APPX0002: Task 'GenerateAppxPackageRecipe' failed. 0x7F - Failed to load MRM support library.\r [C:\Users\sesa151027\Documents\visual studio 2015\Projects\App2\App2\App2.csproj]

Any idea how I can get this resolved?

I tried the following solutions, but in vain.

1. Repair Visual Studio.
2. Uninstall and reinstalling Visual Studio.
3. Repairing Windows SDK.
4. Uninstalling the anniversary pack SDK.

Note #1: I am unable to open the appmanifest file in Visual Studio. When I open it, Visual Studio crashes - the exception seems to be some sort of FileNotFoundError.

Note #2: When I run MSBUILD manually, on command prompt, I get a detailed error. In fact an error message popsup (refer to the screenshot below).

Answer 1

It is not possible to build UWP apps on Windows 7, even if you have Visual Studio 2015 installed. You need to build the app on a Windows 10 device for it to work properly.

The same thing held for Windows 8 apps as well, the app model is not backwards compatible with older Windows versions.