Xbox app not allowing me to change my install direction

Hello impakta123,



Welcome to the Xbox Community Forum. Thank you for sharing your concern with us today and we hope that all is well. I can see that you are having difficulties changing the installation location. Let me see how I can assist you with this concern.





We will first do our research so we can give you concrete answers about what is causing the problem.

However, we’d like to know more about it in details so that we can provide a more accurate resolution for you. To start, please provide us information/answer on the following questions:

• Current version and edition of Windows Installed? (Search for WINVER in Windows search to see this)
  
• Xbox app and Gaming services version?
  
  • Xbox app > select Profile picture > Settings > About.
    
• What troubleshooting steps have you done?
  
• Was this working before?
  
• Recent activity or changes made before the issue appeared?
  

So far, from the details you provided, you can try the following steps and let us know the result. You can just skip those you have done already.



Troubleshoot issues with the Xbox app for Windows

Troubleshoot issues with the Xbox app for Windows | Xbox Support

Let us know the result and we will get back to you as soon as we can. We may recommend further troubleshooting steps once we have received your answers to the above questions.

Hello impakta123,

Thank you for your response. It seems that you are running an older version of Windows. Try to run an update and see if this fixes the issue.

Thank you for the response, but I've given up on using Xbox for PC or whatever they call it. I can easily change the install location on Steam, so I'll just continue to use that service.

To answer your questions, in case they help someone in the future.

- Windows 10, version 21H2 (OS build 19044.2486)

- I had the most current version of the Xbox App as of Jan. 6, 2023. I don't know what that is/was as I have already uninstalled it. That being said, it didn't work a year ago either, which is when the issue first appeared.

- I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the app multiple times, I tried using different drives, including ones I reformatted specifically for testing the issue. I can't remember if I tried anything else the first time this issue appeared, but just to reiterate: The same problem was happening over a year ago on the same system, which has been kept up-to-date. It was a problem on a prior version of Windows 10, and it remains a problem today.

- It worked perfectly fine for about 2 or 3 months when the system was new. It stopped working about a year ago, and hasn't worked since, despite multiple attempts over the last year to re-install and check to see if the issue remains.

- I remember the issue appeared when I set the system up to have a Linux partition so I could learn that OS. I followed a guide for that, and everything else was running fine. I no longer recall if it happened *exactly* at the same time, but I believe it did. The Linux partition has been removed now, but that did not resolve the issue.

Thanks for the help.

Try following the directions in this post.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/xbox/forum/all/how-to-change-install-directory-for-xbox-beta-app/04aeae3d-7a64-44c0-b615-7ae0a9540cd4

I was able to change where apps where installed but have not tried downloading a game to see if it worked yet.

Another person posted this in another thread.

I followed the directions and it has worked for me.

Once you follow the directions once you click on install it bring up a box asking where you want to install the game.

If you are like myself and use a modist sized drive for windows and use a larger drive for gaming you generally want to install your games on your storage drive not your boot drive, but as it stands by
default when you goto use the xbox beta app it wont allow you to change from its default installed drive.

A easy to fix this is to goto system- then storage- and under the storage tab find " change where new content is saved" then select "new apps will save to" and select your preferred storage drive.

Then uninstall your xbox (beta) app, and reinstall it, now when you goto install a new game on the pc game pass it will give you the option to select what drive you want to install it on.

This issue happens because by default windows needs to recognize that your pc has the folder called windows app on that drive and that it has been setup by a windows app installer atleast once, for the
xbox (beta) app to recognize the new (useable) install location for your games and apps

Hope this helps everyone