Facepalm: Forza Horizon 4 finally landed on Tuesday, but was it worth the wait and the long download? Not for some apparently. An annoying bug returns to frustrate users downloading the game.
The Windows Store is known for its buggy nature, especially when it comes to huge downloads. Weighing in at over 63GB, Forza Horizon 4 is the biggest release on the store this year.
Players have been complaining in the Forza forums about the game downloading "infinitely." For some, the download continued well past the 63.27GB --- even as high as 80GB. The bug is reportedly not new. A similar issue arose with Forza 7 and Gears of War 4 downloads.
Fortunately, some workarounds might work to get your purchase running.
The easiest possible fix could be to just pause the download. TechSpot staff have had success getting the game to install by simply clicking pause (or the X). The progress suddenly shows 100 percent and the game is ready to play.
If that doesn't work, VG24/7 reported that when it had the same problem with Forza 7, using a third-party download manager alleviated the headache. It did not specify which manager it used, so try give our Free Download Manager a try.
A third possible fix is a little more complicated, so should probably only be used as a last resort. A user on the Forza forum, HarryGreen96 says to do the following:
Open services.msc
Stop Windows Update service
Find SoftwareDistribution folder
Rename to SoftwareDistributionOLD
Restart Windows Update service
The download progress should go down to 0 then quickly go back up to about 35GB, after which the game should install.
If none of these solutions work for you, it appears you'll have to complain with the rest of the folks until Microsoft can get it fixed. Microsoft staff has already admitted that it is a known bug, so they are likely already trying to figure out a remedy.
In the meantime, the staffer says you can also try resetting the store cache. Open windows start menu and type in 'wsreset' run it and wait until Microsoft store opens. However, this will require starting the download again from scratch.