Xbox Game App suddenly lost most of my storage drives

JordanMartin8 · Jun 1, 2021

Hi,

I'd been using the Xbox app with the MS Game pass recently, but upon logging in today, all my games were missing from the app. When I go to the games on its store, it believes they are not installed. If I ask it to install any game, it can only find my C drive and my E drive, however I have 3 other drives that were perfectly accessible before. in this case I had installed all my games on the app to the H drive which is my NVME SSD, but it cannot find that at all now.

Windows can still use these drives however, they are accessible in file explorer, other programs like Steam can install to them, and I can run programs that are on these drives without any issue.

I am on the version of windows 10 21H1, I tried resetting the xbox app, uninstalling it, tried a system restore, nothing has worked and it cannot use my drives and has still lost all my games ( and I can't even delete the files manually due to how Windows 10 protects its files even from an admin).

Any idea how to fix this?

:)

JordanMartin8

An update:
I went onto the help via Windows 10 as this issue has extended to the "Change where new content is saved" storage settings on the OS itself.
After multiple agents and some failed stuff, one agent realized that somehow every other drive except the two it can spot are owned by SYSTEM, not myself or TrustedInstaller etc, and gave me some commands to try and fix that (takeown /f :g\ /r, and icacls g:\ /grant administrators:F /t)

These two commands, after an hour going through the drives, fixed the issue on some of the drives, but it lasted until I did a restart and the problem immediately returned, except now the ownership is fixed and those commands don't produce the result again.

I'm genuinely clueless as to what is causing this, I had no issues at all until I used this cursed xbox app.

JordanMartin8

Hi, this didn't offer a solution. The apps are simply disappearing, but the storage they are on is perfectly functional otherwise. It is still happening and I cannot access the games. It's gotten worse now, with the game-pass not able to see *any* drives at all.

In my settings on the Xbox App, it believes all its dependencies are not installed and if I ask it to install them, they reinstall but it still can't find them. The app appears to be given no access to any part of my PC without any reason or explanation.

XBF Meryem R

Hello there!

Please try following the steps on thin link Troubleshoot game installations on a Windows 10 device | Xbox Support in order to resolve your issue.

Puppy Fujo

And here is the post to make it easier.

There is only a certain amount of space dedicated for file storage as they drive is split into partitions. Just like an external drive, it can be formatted for file storage or games and apps. It can't hold both. So
they split the internal drive so there is some file storage with most of the drive dedicated to storage of games and apps. I noticed the same thing when using my console to download videos using torrents or using Edge to download videos. It is the only logical
conclusion given these observations.

EggsBoxJuan

Hi,

you most certainly can copy/move your data between the xbox hard drive and an external hard drive.

How do I manage external storage?

In My games & apps, you can view content by storage device. To do this, highlight a game or app, press the Menu button on your controller, and then select Manage game. You will then be able to move or copy content between storage devices.

More information regarding external storage can be found in the link below.

support.xbox.com/.../manage-storage

Xbox Game App suddenly lost most of my storage drives