Hi Will,

Thanks for sharing this issue. Unfortunately, I have only bad news to report here.

NCrunch is reliant on the IApplicationActivationManager.ActivateApplication service call to launch a Windows Store app (or test project) with its sandboxing intact. This is the same service call used by VSTest to launch your application when it runs automated tests, and it has an available option designed to suppress the splash screen when the application is launched.

Unfortunately, under Windows 10, the option to disable the splash screen has been completely broken. The splash screen will show regardless of anything passed into the service call.

You'll be able to observe this behaviour under Visual Studio by using VSTest to run your tests - it will display a splash screen. This never used to happen under Windows 8.1.

I've reported the issue to Microsoft here - https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/1640525/windows-store-app-activation-always-shows-splash-screen-even-when-instructed-not-to-by-api-call. Please throw whatever votes against this you can, as I feel this is a serious defect and MS should take notice of it.

Usually when something in the pipe goes wrong like this, there is some way to work around it through memory hacks or 'creative' solutions. Unfortunately in this case the problem is deep within the O/S itself, where application code just can't access it. At present I see no way of solving this problem from the side of NCrunch. The only way to continue to operate is to switch NCrunch into manual mode and run the tests manually, or alternatively downgrade to Windows 8.1 :(

I'm getting this issue escalated to Microsoft, as it's now become a blocker for our team.

In the meantime, I can confirm that I can run tests using vstest.console and it *doesn't* show the splash screen. Is it worth investigating how *vstest.console* inhibits the splash screen?