Reordering list crashes in unpackaged app as admin in 1.7, does not reorder in 1.8

[beeradmoore]

Describe the bug

There are differences when having a list that can be ordered which varies if you are running WindowsAppSDK v1.7 or v1.8, unpackaged or packaged. The issue appears when the user is running the application as an elevated process. To debug this you need to run visual studio as admin.

The exception message is just "catastrophic failure"

When running as a regular user,

	Packaged	Unackaged
1.7.250909003	✅	✅
1.8.250907003	✅	✅

When running as an elevaeted process (run as admin)

	Packaged	Unackaged
1.7.250909003	✅	❌ (app throws exception, "catastrophic failure")
1.8.250907003	✅	🤷‍♂️ (app does not crash, however app cannot reorder list)

The code used in the apps is as follows

<ListView
        ItemsSource="{x:Bind Items, Mode=OneWay}"
        ScrollViewer.VerticalScrollMode="Disabled"
        ScrollViewer.VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Disabled"
        CanReorderItems="True"
        AllowDrop="True"
        SelectionMode="None">

    <ListView.ItemTemplate>
        <DataTemplate x:DataType="x:String">
            <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
                <FontIcon Glyph="&#xE700;" FontSize="12" FontWeight="Bold" />
                <TextBlock Text="{x:Bind Mode=OneWay}"  />
            </StackPanel>
        </DataTemplate>
    </ListView.ItemTemplate>
</ListView>

public ObservableCollection<string> Items { get; } = new ObservableCollection<string>()
{
    "Item 1",
    "Item 2",
    "Item 3",
    "Item 4",
    "Item 5",
};

Steps to reproduce the bug

Go to repo: https://github.com/beeradmoore/WindowsAppSDK_ReorderListIssue
There are 4 solutions each in a named folder. Visual Studio needs to be running as admin in all 4 cases. (I now realise I should have made 1 solution with 4 packages in it, apologies)

Running each project and attempting to re-order the list gives differnet results.

Expected behavior

You can re-order the list in v1.7 and v1.8, unpackaged and packaged apps, while running elevated or not.

Screenshots

No response

NuGet package version

Windows App SDK 1.8.0: 1.8.250907003

Packaging type

Unpackaged, Packaged (MSIX)

Windows version

Windows 11 version 24H2 (26100, June 2025 Update)

IDE

Visual Studio 2022

Additional context

This is currently a bug that was reported in my app, DLSS Swapper. If I were to update to v1.8 I would not get the crash however the users would not be able to re-order their lists.

Additionally we can't update to v1.8 because of the existing issues with unpackaged apps using translations breaking in v1.8 (see microsoft/WindowsAppSDK#5832 and microsoft/WindowsAppSDK#5746)

[mominshaikhdevs]

• ListView reorder item triggers ObservableCollection Remove and Add instead of Move #9685.

• Drag&Drop does not work with within Elevated Apps #7690.

[beeradmoore]

Thanks @mominshaikhdevs for the info, that explains why I didn't find more of it here, I always forget microsoft-ui-xaml repo exists.