Xbox App on PC cannot install games on non system drive

Maxele · Jul 26, 2022

Hi there,

First of all I'd like to underline that Xbox app on PC IS A TOTAL MESS. And now to the issue: I have built a new PC 2 days ago, installed Xbox app (Windows 11 Pro) and marked my second non system partition as a default directory. Then Xbox app created a new WindowsApps and Program Files folders in my non system partition which were difficult to delete but in the end after editing my system permissions I managed - the games did not download on any partition at the time. Many Powershell scripts later the games started working but only when installing on the system partition which I do not want to take up with games.

1. When trying to move the game within the Xbox app -> Manage -> Change drive this is what happens:

2. When trying to download the game directly to my second partition:

I tried resetting Gaming Services with PowerShell many times, using wsreset.exe, syncind date and time and none fo those worked. Also the WindowsApps folder within the system partition is literally empty along with WpSystem and MidifiableWindowsApps (these are the folders I remember that were created in the non system partition first when trying to download the games there. Please help, I'm fuiming that this app is not working as expected. Not to mention that AMD Adrenaline forced GPU scaling for 21:9 monitors does not work with game pass games...

:)

JosefLBohorquez

Hi and thanks for reaching Microsoft Xbox gamer's community. My name is Josef.
I'm an Independent Advisor and a Microsoft Xbox user like you.

Hope you're doing great today despite this Maxele

May I know if the second drive is already formatted as NTFS?
If not, please do it and let me know how it goes

I'll be waiting for your reply to see how to proceed, greetings from another Microsoft user

Ricardo Lechuga

Hi Daniel733! My name is Ricardo an independent advisor ready to help you with this situation!

I have faced this problem on some occasions and what has worked is to move the games once installed in this way

To do this, head to Settings > Apps > Apps & features. Click an app and click the “Move” button. You'll be prompted to select another drive, and you can then click “Move” to move the app to that drive. If you see a “Modify” button instead of a move button, you've selected a traditional desktop app.

Nursemorph

Yeah, I have lost count of the number of threads that have been written here in my time on this forum.

For me, I was curious as I have never tried downloading from the Xbox App...I just fired it up, chose the first game listed in the Game Pass bit (A Plagues Tale), it listed all 3 of my hard drives and let me choose whichever one I wanted and started downloading to it fine (although I didn't let it finish downloading so maybe avoided errors)

Nursemorph

Yeah, it's strange. However, given how buggy the XBox App is, I am not at all surprised... given all the issues with that app, it feels like something that was rushed out with little testing

Daniel733

Yeah, it worked fine for me for a few months with the first few installs, but has never worked since. That's usually how it goes for most people.

Xbox App on PC cannot install games on non system drive