ARK Stuck Updating Loop - HELP!

[Myrkrios]

First and foremost, I did not want to necro all of the previous discussions regarding this, so forgive me for beating a dead horse as I know I am not the only one who has had this problem and brought it online for help....

After 120+ hours of playtime with no problems, I hopped on to play ARK because I haven't in awhile and I miss it. I go to press play and it says update required...okay, I'm fine with that. An update came along that the steam download page on the steam client indicated was 170GB+. Needless to say I was shocked. When attempting to go ahead and let it do it's thing, I gave it an hour and came back and no progress had occurred, in fact it was still validating...hadn't even cleared that yet. So I thought, well if it's really a 170GB+ game/install maybe I should just let it go for the night. Insured my computer was set to not sleep or update or make any changes during the 12 hour period of time between. Came back following day and literally still stuck in the same exact spot as before. Figured it was time to roll up my sleeves. Did the following troubleshooting:

1) Restart computer - No change, still same issue.

2) Clear steam cache and temp downloads - Nothing changed.

3) Tried switching network to a few different download servers (located in Houston, tried Dallas first, figured that's too close, moved it to London, Sweden, etc and restarted steam and still nothing.

4) Tried switching the download cap to 25MB and 10MB and restarted steam and neither made a difference, tried every variation of UNLIMITED, 25MB, and 10MB on 4-5 different download server locations and restarted steam in between and still nothing.

5) Gave up and completely uninstalled and removed the game from my system and started from scratch. Installed the game without a problem as a fresh start. Booted right up, no problem, played for 6-8 hours in one session. GREAT! It's fixed...I just needed to reinstall the whole game, that's inconvenient, but okay. It's fixed now. I get on a few days later....

ARK needs an update...awesome. Back to square one. So...the only working solution I can find is that each time an update is released (which is fairly often as I now realize) I am forced to completely wipe everything and reinstall the game from scratch in order to play it. I seriously love this game, but if I have to re-download it each time (which I have done 3 times), then I can't effectively hop on and play whenever...There's a whole set of steps I have to take to execute the game each time and it is not efficient for my PC, data, time, or sanity as a busy working adult who has limited time as it is.

Meanwhile every other game I have (303 games not including ARK) has no problem updating or launching without a problem, including with and without any of the variables introduced in the troubleshooting things I listed above. I am at a loss...I've followed everything I can possibly find to troubleshoot this issue and read every forum and mention of ARK+STUCK+UPDATE+VALIDATING for many pages down Google's indexes through forums, steam and off steam, etc...ready to pull my hair out and I'd like to keep my hair.

Anyone have any ideas or solutions that they found when they experienced same/similar issues? Thanks in advance!

[Anubis]

Are you sure you have enough space for ark? Ark is a huge game that need a lot more off space to download and unpack. How many Gigas you have free?

[Myrkrios]

Originally posted by Anubis:

Are you sure you have enough space for ark? Ark is a huge game that need a lot more off space to download and unpack. How many Gigas you have free?

As of reading this, I currently have roughly 15TB of space, 6.29TB out of 7.27TB free on my Toshiba X300 8TB Performance HDD which is one of the drives I have set as a library for Steam. I don't think space is the issue

Is it possible that it's trying to download on a different drive on the computer? I have a smaller SSD that has some steam games on it, but when I downloaded ARK, I only downloaded it to the 8TB HDD so I would assume it would know to update and verify files there instead of elsewhere.

Also, to clarify, it appears the main issue is that my network usage within Steam's download page indicates a 0bytes/s current rate when updating. That's why I tried changing download settings (servers, data caps, etc) but ARK is the only game with the problem. Literally all of my 300+ other games all have no problem and the current download rates are 11-15Mbps, so it doesn't appear to be an internet problem on my network end. I am also under the assumption that network isn't a factor when validating local files because I've never seen network usage activity while verifying game files that I can remember...but it looks the same when downloading updates, disk usage is up and down and all over the place but network usage is dead/nonexistant.

[Myrkrios]

UPDATE: Went back through all of the aforementioned troubleshooting of restarting computer, adjusting download settings to 25Mbps rate cap and moved myself to London's servers from Houston and for whatever reason (because network shouldn't be an issue for this) it started verifying. Once that was completed, it started downloading the update with apparently no problems. I was about to get on here to type the update to say that it fixed itself, however by the time I had it typed up to post, I went back over to check on it and it's now stuck on 324.8MB out of 434.5MB update and as soon as it hit that point, network traffic died and disc is still up and down with plenty of activity but network disappeared and went back to 0bytes/s.

[Firall]

As long as the disc is still working, you should probably just wait. It may be unpacking.

This is a very old problem not limited to Ark. Some other things I know have worked for people:

Flushing DNS.

Running steam as administrator.

Swapping to an SSD.

[Myrkrios]

Firall, those are good suggestions. Already flushed DNS, forgot to mention that. I always run all apps as admin by default. I've had it installed on a 2TB SSD previously when I had it on my desktop and had the same issues, now it's on an external HDD. I don't know. I'm puzzled...

[Myrkrios]

Bump for any other advice or info? Still not seeing any network activity on updates...

[Firall]

Originally posted by Myrkrios:

Is it possible that it's trying to download on a different drive on the computer? I have a smaller SSD that has some steam games on it, but when I downloaded ARK, I only downloaded it to the 8TB HDD so I would assume it would know to update and verify files there instead of elsewhere.

So was trying to help someone else troubleshoot a similar problem, and it turned out steam was downloading to his primary drive first, then moving it to the ark folder on his other drive, and one of the two didn't have enough space.

This is not the way it should work, but apparently it does sometimes.

[Myrkrios]

All of my drives have at least 1TB free space....oh well. It ended up allocating and checking files completed after like 72 straight hours of waiting, then it started downloading update, which took like 10 min or less. *facepalm* Still no solution besides just being patient (VERY patient).

[Timbobske]

Originally posted by Myrkrios:

All of my drives have at least 1TB free space....oh well. It ended up allocating and checking files completed after like 72 straight hours of waiting, then it started downloading update, which took like 10 min or less. *facepalm* Still no solution besides just being patient (VERY patient).

Hi Myrkrios its been some time since u posted this but I have the same problem rn Nothing works ive been updatting ark for over a week now. Did u find a solution?

[DX♥™ZeroCool®✌☣]

Only thing i know about this is if you are using a external hard drive it cause a loop happened to one of my friends

[Lori37]

holy necro batman

[Myrkrios]

Originally posted by Timbobske:

Originally posted by Myrkrios:

All of my drives have at least 1TB free space....oh well. It ended up allocating and checking files completed after like 72 straight hours of waiting, then it started downloading update, which took like 10 min or less. *facepalm* Still no solution besides just being patient (VERY patient).

Hi Myrkrios its been some time since u posted this but I have the same problem rn Nothing works ive been updatting ark for over a week now. Did u find a solution?

No solution beyond getting access to the game on a different platform. Steam updates are broken for me with this game.

I signed up for Xbox Gamepass awhile back and noticed they include ARK on the monthly subscription plan I have. I've yet to have a single occurrence of it in over a year. Try on Steam again and nothing resolved, still having same problem. Sorry, I wish I could be better help but only confirmed solution from me is find it somewhere else, Steam's game update framework is the issue, not the game or the updates.