The Witcher 3 - Steam Download starts and stops at certain percentage, reschedules, never finishes. Please help!

[Quintin]

Hi,

I've been having an annoying issue with downloading "The Witcher 3" for the past several months. I've downloaded several other games during this time, and The Witcher is the only game affected.

The download never finishes, always stopping in the region of around 75%. The download stops, reschedules for downloading again in 15 minutes' time, starts again, fails again, reschedules, etc. etc.

The first time I downloaded the game, it downloaded to 75%, and then stopped. I thought it might be a corrupt download (which is what a dialogue told me), and deleted the entire download (around 22GB), and started again. At 75%, it failed yet again.

I then cleared the local file cache, as advised by someone having the same problem on YouTube, which deleted all the downloaded files, and began again. Again, it failed at around 75%.

I restarted the download again, and again is stopped at 75%.

I've tried the following fixes, which I've found scattered across the Steam Forums, YouTube, Steam support and other places from people having the same issue. Solutions that worked for many people don't seem to help at all.

- Restarted Router
- Deleted game's local files and starting again (it failed at 24Gb again).
- Running Steam as Administrator,
- Changing Steam's download region to "South Africa - Johannesburg" and then to "UK - London", and at least 8 other regions
- Waiting until the next day and trying again,
- Keeping the game in the queue for two months, hoping it will somehow start downloading (no such luck)
- Queuing another game above it, then re-queueing the first game,
- Queuing another game above it, allowing this to complete,
- Checked Steam's list of apps that might interfere with Steam (I don't have any of them installed),
- Disabling Windows Defender temporarily
- Disconnecting LAN cable from router and connecting the computer directly to the internet
- Limiting download bandwidth to 3MB
- Closing Skype

I'm at the end of my rope and I'm not sure how to continue. Can anyone offer any help?

Thanks in advance.

[eram]

Follow all the steps in the guide below. You do not need to clear the game cache or lose any downloaded game files.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3134-TIAL-4638

[Tev]

If the above doesn't work, try this:

• Disabling Background Applications
  
  • https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8043-EUJN-5239

Then try installing in another location on the computer,

• Download Stalls at a Certain Percentage
  
  • https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6966-IADH-1503

[Quintin]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Greatly appreciated.

I tried most of the solutions you suggested (flushing config, deleting Steam entirely and leaving only downloads and steamapps folders, and then allowing Steam to re-install itself), but this had no effect.

The issue was eventually resolved... almost spontaneously. I was busy installing Steam on another computer (a Mac) to try download the files, but while installing, I noticed that the download seemed more consistent.

I had limited my download bandwidth to 48kbps, and then forgot about it, allowing it to download for a few days (starting and stopping as it went). Eventually the issue went away and it downloaded without me needing to throttle the connection.

This is a VERY confusing issue with seemingly no clear cause or solution. Steam definitely needs to do a better job of addressing and supporting this problem, since it's causing a lot of headaches for people, going on similar questions on the forum.

-

After all that, though, I'm now having problems with launching The Witcher 3, with the game starting and registering a process in Task Manager but nothing further happening, no launch at all. :(

Similar to this: https://steamcommunity.com/app/292030/discussions/0/594820656444590103/

I currently also have a support ticket open with CDProjektRed to resolve this. What a runaround. :(

[Ruswarr]

Sorry for the necropost, I know I'm "kinda" late to the party but I got the same issue with TW3 today as in the opening post and managed to fix it. The only difference is that my install started stumbling at ~69 percent.

In my case the culprit seemingly was the antivirus (Avira); for some reason it decided to actively interfere with the download at that point, which I noticed by increased CPU load on the Avira process in task manager (which is usually very low during Steam downloads and installations).
I had to go to Windows' safe mode (with net driver support, obviously) and the downloading actually was able to contunie. I got a few percents of download going and went back to Windows' regular mode, with downloading continuing fine at the moment of me writing the post.

I hope this may be of help to someone.

[gambitse]

Originally posted by Ruswarr:

Sorry for the necropost, I know I'm "kinda" late to the party but I got the same issue with TW3 today as in the opening post and managed to fix it. The only difference is that my install started stumbling at ~69 percent.

In my case the culprit seemingly was the antivirus (Avira); for some reason it decided to actively interfere with the download at that point, which I noticed by increased CPU load on the Avira process in task manager (which is usually very low during Steam downloads and installations).
I had to go to Windows' safe mode (with net driver support, obviously) and the downloading actually was able to contunie. I got a few percents of download going and went back to Windows' regular mode, with downloading continuing fine at the moment of me writing the post.

I hope this may be of help to someone.

Thanks for the tip!

Though CPU utilization was not all that high the Avira real-time scanner was quite busy in my case (8-10% CPU) and disabling the real-time protection in Avira allowed the download to finish.

[A6relatas]

Same problem Witcher 3 and AVG Antivirus. Never happened to me before with other titles in Steam platform. I've never had to stop AVG for a download...which makes me think...what am I downloading?

[DaemoniKira]

I had the same problem and when I uninstalled my free antivirus, Avast, the Witcher 3 installed perfectly... and even faster than the first two attempts. Thank you, @Ruswarr, for your post!

[Kevo]

I had the same issue. I disabled Avast Ultimate suite for 1 hour and it downloaded at a healthy 107MB/s. Lovely jubbely!

[Iceira]

Old Necro post, if you get stuck 0% or 99% to 100% that is know as possible its antivirus blocking issue.

Change DL zone can be best advice, if server content is buggy , but that rare and might still be game devs problem.

and thats clear download cache , to get new cache content from server.
so it dont keep use local cache to compare your install with.

[Gunnerb52]

I had the same problem today with Witcher 3. It would get to 69% and stop. I uninstalled and deleted every leftover folder and tried different locations and still 69%. After reading about the antivirus thing I stopped AVG and tried again and the download worked fine. I wonder what causes the download to stop like that? I had downloaded a whole bunch of other things with no problems on Steam.

[Iceira]

Originally posted by CapetainMex:

I had the same problem today with Witcher 3. It would get to 69% and stop. I uninstalled and deleted every leftover folder and tried different locations and still 69%. After reading about the antivirus thing I stopped AVG and tried again and the download worked fine. I wonder what causes the download to stop like that? I had downloaded a whole bunch of other things with no problems on Steam.

you sure you have free room enough ? 69% is a odd place to get stuck, but as i said AV that scan or unpacing things and dont have room for checking , can cause issue with steam DL,
let me be hard do have 3 to 5 times free work space more then DL need , this is old news then we DL zip or packed files from the past ( and its still a recoomadaton in as best advice )
you could say will be nice if steam took a buffer zone with extra work space and warn people then you dont have that buffer size left, do keep in mind its not steam job to take what it dont need. ( so this is seen as user own problem have enough free room )
and if you notice most dont have this issue then HDD is new and empty, so you could say user own faulth. storage space is not a steam issue at all.

and yet clear download cache might have help with next retry so it get a fresh DL from server.
its not that simple. you need to be expert and no such step by step trials, and normal user dont care or should not have to deal with it.

[Gunnerb52]

Trying to install it on a 2T SSD with 1.5T left. As I said as soon as I disabled the antivirus the download finished. I had tried multiple times up to that point. I even completely uninstalled the download and deleted any remaining folders and rebooted computer. I have a 2 SSD drives and 1 HHD drive inside the computer for a total of 7T inside. External drives I have 4 for a total of 12T. Total empty space for all drives combined are around 11T. I also have a 1G fiber connection and 48G of memory in computer so I have more than enough of everything. I can't even say it might have been a virus since I was doing a fresh reload of computer and had antivirus installed right after all Windows 10 updates had been installed. Though Windows 10 Defender does a pretty good job by itself now. According to Windows 10 I have downloaded over 300G of files since I did a reload and the only problem was Witcher 3 which was resolved by pausing AVG antivirus. Up until it hung up at 69% I was on pace for having the 42G Witcher 3 program downloaded in under 9 minutes.

Perhaps Witcher 3 and AVG had a weird digital sex thing going and liked 69 :)

[Iceira]

Originally posted by CapetainMex:

Trying to install it on a 2T SSD with 1.5T left. As I said as soon as I disabled the antivirus the download finished. I had tried multiple times up to that point. I even completely uninstalled the download and deleted any remaining folders and rebooted computer. I have a 2 SSD drives and 1 HHD drive inside the computer for a total of 7T inside. External drives I have 4 for a total of 12T. Total empty space for all drives combined are around 11T. I also have a 1G fiber connection and 48G of memory in computer so I have more than enough of everything. I can't even say it might have been a virus since I was doing a fresh reload of computer and had antivirus installed right after all Windows 10 updates had been installed. Though Windows 10 Defender does a pretty good job by itself now. According to Windows 10 I have downloaded over 300G of files since I did a reload and the only problem was Witcher 3 which was resolved by pausing AVG antivirus. Up until it hung up at 69% I was on pace for having the 42G Witcher 3 program downloaded in under 9 minutes.

Perhaps Witcher 3 and AVG had a weird digital sex thing going and liked 69 :)

it not that we dont belive you ,noone can check this anyway , only AVG people , also why we all get into argument over it, seen much hate in other games over semi same thing,

im not surprise , but that require you know my old view on security apps, problem with your app its half way though thats a odd blocking trigger , such is more at begining and end of file. not middle.

its not its any news but i bet other AVG people mightwant to know , you might want to contact AVG support.
because its not game devs issue or steam, what security app people have so this end up at AVG own support and they might want to look at , why do we block such.
and i bet you can see other security app give a crap what other app is doing , problem is they all drag gamers experiencce with it down. ( and yet this reflect back at user for not check up on it )
exception rule or allow rule. ( its tough learning. )
and apox 5-10 from now , you wont get help at all, user problem have a nice day. deal with it or something like that