Need some serious help. ''C:\Users\Documents\my games...."

[S Pena]

XCOM is one of my favorite franchises. I recently got a new PC with a smaller 500gb SSD and bought a 3tb external 3.0 drive for all my ''easy loading'' games, like Xcom. All my other external and SSD games work perfectly fine.

No matter what, I keep getting this damn error when I open the launcher (lets you pick XCOM2 or WOTC) when I click Play that says:
"C:\Users\Documents\my games\XCOM2 War of the Chosen\XComGame\Config\XcomEngine.ini....Reason: Access to the path is denied"

I've tried everything I could from googling and finding old Steam posts, tried downloading the game to my C: (SSD) and to my F: (external). Tried removing ''Read Only'' from all the folders for the game, also tried running the .exe as Admin, nothing works. I had something similar to this happen with Divinity 2 which I could at least bypass by running the .exe as Admin, but not for Xcom.

It lets me play the game if I click OK, but it won't save the game and none of my Workshop downloads work.

Please help! I really want to play a new campaign with some of these ♥♥♥♥♥in' new Workshop mods.

[donald23]

What that means is that you have done something with your My Documents or My Games (subfolder of the first, both are system folders and should always be present on any Windows system).

Apparently Windows thinks those are still located at the default location, because that's what XCOM gets, but they seem to not be there.

If you move those, you have two ways of doing that.
First is to manually move the folder and then create a hardlink in the original place.
The other is to use the Windows feature via properties of the folder to move it to a new location.

[Corvo]

Yep, exact same issue

[S Pena]

So I managed to start the game through Steam without getting the C:\ error.

I was able to find in my Documents\User\MyGames the folder for XCOM2 & WOTC, went into the Config and Saves/Save folders and deleted EVERYTHING inside while steam was closed. Then I opened Steam and uninstalled ALL of my mods (maybe 15-20) then I re-downloaded maybe 10 of my favorites.

Game opens fine now! I started New Game and my squad had random pieces of mod gear (good sign) then I saved a game and quit back to Main Menu to test.........but looks like now my mods are working, but my saving doesn't work. I can see a bunch of my old Saved Games for some reason, but not the new ones i'm making.

This is frustrating as ♥♥♥♥, was there some sort of update to Xcom2/WTOC that caused this? Shouldn't be so damn complicated to play a game how you used to.

[lPaladinl]

External Drives aren't the best idea for installing software unless it's software that is entirely independent and functions solely within of it's own install folder.

My best advice is to just not use external drives for software. At least not unless you learn what software is 'safe' to use in external drives without causing issues. The issue is with Windows and how it handles pathways for drives. It has nothing to do with XCOM or any other game.

Basically, external drives on USB don't have consistent pathways, everytime you reboot the PC or reconnect the drive, your pathways may have changed, and the pathways requested by a game will be invalid addresses. The game is only programmed to make the addresses it's supposed to when it's installed. So when those change, the game breaks because it can't access files and folders that it's supposed to.

Not to mention, unless you've got your external drive hooked up with SATA, which I honestly doubt, you're slowing down your read/write times significantly if it's a USB 3.0 drive. So in the case that you are not using SATA cables already, an internal drive would both solve your problem *and* be an upgrade in drive performance.

What donald23 posted can solve the issue in the short term, but it's a bandaid solution: one that you will have to apply again and again each time Windows doesn't agree with the pathways that your games want to call up.

So in this case, the complication isn't with gaming or PCs even, it's because you're doing something that never really was a standard way of installing video games. You're basically trying to install games on a USB stick, and a lot of people probably have experience with how poorly that works unless you have a "USB-ready" version or something similar. PCs have been this way for as long as I remember.

It's also not a gaming problem, it affects all software the same way for the same reasons.

So in short:

1. Buy an Internal or at the very least a SATA external drive
2. Reinstall the game there


You'll never see that problem again.

[Psykho]

Hi All

i am almost having the same issue as S.Pena except my second drive in an internal 2 TB,
i have tried everything mentioned above to no avail cannot save a game. never touched or moved the "my games" folder in documents (new windows install didnt even check it was there was downloading games) & my documents folder is completely empty. i only have 3 DLC packs & no outfit mods etc any other suggestions what i can try ?

[S Pena]

So i have over 20 games on my external usb drive and yes, i have learned the hard way my first time moving apartments that disconnecting the USB drive will cause the issue where the games ''forget'' where they are and then I need to have Steam or Origin ''find'' them, which really doesn't take that much time compared to download+install, but certainly was a fun lesson to learn.

Now, this external drive is forever connected and even after restarting, installing windows updates or shutting down my PC, it never has this issue like XCOM2 is having for any of my other games. I've got my SSD designated for newer, bigger games like The Division 2 & Battlefield 5, but all of my other games that i'm no longer interested in keeping on the SSD like Anthem, The Sims 4, Destiny 2, Skyrim, Fallout 4, Fallout 76, Apex Legens, etc... these are all on my external and quite honestly they barely run or load that much slower compared to when I've had them on my SSD.

I've recently made some room and freshly installed XCOM2 over to my SSD and now my mods are finally working after deleting all the config & saved game folders in My Games, and re-installed only half of the mods i would like, but saving is still not working, even after checking the game files through steam. I should add that XCOM2 previously worked flawlessly when I had it on my external with all my mods, and only after moving-out has this 1 game decided to bug out :(