XBox App - Can't Install Games

I've installed the XBox app and up until about a day or two ago it was working fine. I have multiple drives in my system labeled;

C - Windows
D - HDD For Games
F - SSD For Games
R - Media Storage (photos/etc.)
S - Docs/Projects
Z - Backups

When I installed the XBox app I instantly set it to download all games to the F drive as I wanted the newer titles to have the best performance possible. I installed about a half dozen games and have been playing them fine. Two days ago, without any changes or updates to my computer, I went to look at my XBox library and it was completely blank. No games installed. I went to check the contents of the F drive and everything was still physically on it.

Back in the XBox app I looked into the settings and noticed it was set to use my C drive. I wouldn't have changed that setting myself, because I don't install anything to my C drive unless it's absolutely necessary. Games are NEVER installed to my C drive (aside from their appdata and whatnot). I tried to change the setting back to the F drive and it instantly popped back to C. Over a dozen times I tried to change the setting and it kept popping back to C. I tried setting it to my D drive and it stayed. Tried R, it stayed. Tried S, it stayed. Set it back to F and it popped back to the last one it was on (S in this case). No matter what I tried it would NOT select the F drive, which it had been using fine till that day. As stated, I made no changes to my computer. The only thing I'd been doing the past couple days was installing and playing games on the XBox app.

I clicked onto one of the games I was interested in installing, in this case Payday 3. When it popped up to install it let me select where to go. I actually selected the F drive, which was listed. Clicked install, the screen flashed and I got a notification in the XBox app that the game had a problem installing. One thing I noticed here is that, prior to this, when I would install an XBox game it would pop up and ask me to provide admin permissions. It didn't do that this time. Tried installing another game, selecting F, and the same result. Game wouldn't install and it never asked me for admin permission.

Next I wanted to see if the already installed games were broken. I used windows explorer to manually navigate through the F drive to the game's executable. Running the game manually worked and, interestingly enough, put the game back into my library in the XBox app. I have no clue if the games will update should a patch come out, but at least I found a work-around to add the already installed games back to the App library.

When searching this problem online I found a mountain of conflicting data telling me to do all kinds of **** to my computer. Wanting the app to work again, I followed each of them step by step. Here's some of the stuff I went through;

- Ran a chkdsk on the F drive.
- Performed a system restore to 3 days ago.
- Set windows to install Apps to F drive. (*1)
- Used powershell to reinstall "Gaming Services".
- Uninstalled and Reinstalled the XBox App.
- Deleted all of the system folders from F drive.
- Took ownership (my admin account) of the F drive. (*2)
- Created a symbolic link from "C:\XBox" to F drive. (*3)
- Verified all the XBox services are running
- Verified "Gaming Services" is running

*1. This actually succeeded in allowing me to set the XBox app to now install to the F drive. However, when trying to install anything it still fails instantly.

*2. The ownership swap completed however it was unable to change the ownership on any of the executable files in the XBox game folders.

*3. The XBox app wouldn't use the symbolic link as a proper install location, so I had to abandon the test and delete the link.

One user suggested formatting the drive, then reinstalling the XBox app. Personally I don't find this a viable solution due to the fact that it's not the drive that's the problem. Steam and BattleNet continue to use the drive without any problems, and can install and uninstall from it just fine. The issue is clearly some kind of conflict between Windows and the XBox app, period. More than likely it's a permissions or access issue. That said, I have no idea how to fix it because I'm not the one who decided to write the software like that. Personally I think the XBox app should just be a regular program that we can run as admin... But hey, I'm not a programmer for Microsoft.

So how do I get this fixed? Right now the time is ticking on my Gamepass and the outcome to this problem will determine if I cancel or not.

:)