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Microsoft Store always downloads to the C: drive, no matter what.

Anonymous
2018-05-15T02:05:41+00:00

I'm having a very frustrating problem and I think the only solution is to reinstall Windows onto a larger partition.

I'm trying to download Sea of Thieves in the Microsoft Store and it's downloading to the C: drive. I really despise the Microsoft Store and I've always refused to even open it, much less rely on it for anything, so I'm at a loss as to what the problem could be.

Sea of Thieves is a 21 GB game. I only have 15 GB of free space on the 110 GB Windows partition (C:). I can't find enough stuff to uninstall or delete to free enough space on the C: drive.

I've already changed all the storage settings to put new apps (and everything else) in my F: drive. When I start downloading the game, it asks me where I want to install it, so I select the F: drive. Neither of those actually had any affect, the files are still being downloaded to the C: drive and the download process stops when the drive is full.

So that leaves me with only one solution - reinstall Windows onto a larger partition. That is absolutely unacceptable. Why can't Microsoft design anything correctly?

Any help would be appreciated but this isn't looking good. Maybe I can symlink or junction the Microsoft Store folder to a custom location on another drive?

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Gaming

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-05-15T02:17:37+00:00

    Hi leptoon,

    I hope I can help you here, sorry to see you're having a bad experience with this. You can try specifying a new directory in the Registry Editor, though it's no easy fix, but I'm here to make it at least a little easier by guiding you through it.

    Hit Windows key + R together and enter: regedit

    In the new Registry Editor window, navigate to the following: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Appx

    Right-click that Appx folder, then click Permissions... in the context menu, then click Advanced. Change the owner to your name. Enter your user name in the box under "Enter the object name to select", then click Check names. Once your name has been verified, click OK. Make sure that "Replace all child object permission entries with inheritable permission entries from this object" is checked, as well as "Replace owner on subcontainers and objects." Click OK again.

    Make sure that the Administrators and Users groups have full access. Now change the value of the PackageRoot entry on the right pane, to the directory you want to set it to.

    Reboot if you have to, but this might work without it. I hope this helps. If this didn't work or if this worked, I'd like to hear about it. Let me know.

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-05-15T03:28:42+00:00

    leptoon,

    I sympathize with you there, there should be more concrete solutions that is within the scope of intuition that consumers hold.

    Have a great one.

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-05-15T02:54:36+00:00

    Thanks, that fixed it. Though it's a bit upsetting that registry changes were required to fix a broken setting. Windows is so annoying.

    6 people found this answer helpful.
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