PZ Workshop Content Download Stuck at 94%…

[crimson juniper]

Hi. Since the recent Steam application update (for Windows 10 64bit), I’m having repeated issues with Project Zomboid. Something (labelled as “Workshop Content”) keeps wanting to download but is stuck at 94% in an endless loop for some reason.

I’ve tried:

• Clearing download cache (no change)
• Logging out and in of Steam (no change)

I even went as far as uninstalling and reinstalling Steam and the games I have, and downloads only worked recently after the fresh Steam install, but a few days later, the Project Zomboid “Workshop content” keeps getting stuck at 94% happens again.

While it does the endless loop (as in stuck like this for days), it also shows red text saying: ”missing installed files”.

Does anybody know what could be causing this?

[granite flint]

Sounds either like a Steam issue or perhaps an antivirus blocking the files

Can you check if your antivirus is blocking any?

[crimson juniper]

Usually when I game, with or without Steam, I always disable Windows Defender.

I have since conducted yet another Project Zomboid game file verification, and it re-downloaded all my mods since I keep them locally in the Zomboid folder on the C:\ drive, and not in the Steam location where Workshop content goes to.

It’s stopped the endless loop for now, but it did the same thing when I reinstalled steam and stayed fine for a few days, but then it appears that Steam tries to push through a Workshop item update and it just gets stuck.

I’m still monitoring it for now to see if the problem repeats itself after the verification I did today.

[random epoch]

I was wondering if you have any follow-ups with this as of lately? I just noticed that I was beginning to have this issue and will try the methods you went through as explained here, but still curious if anything has changed!

[crimson juniper]

@random epoch - Nobody from PZSupport has responded to this issue, and I’ve even created a Steam support ticket, and even they can’t pinpoint the cause of the problem related to the start/stop download loop.

So far it seems that everyone is clueless about this bug, and at best everyone keeps pointing fingers at someone else. Such a disappointing situation for a product that has been paid for.

[granite flint]

My response is right above yours, unless you do not consider me PZ Support?

Either way, workshop issues specifically are due to Steam having problems, Project Zomboid is in no way responsible for workshop downloads on the Steam client through the Steam service (because we do not handle either of those)

You have not tried reinstalling your whole Steam client itself from what you listed

[crimson juniper]

@granite flint - My bad, I was thinking of another forum where I didn’t get a response from PZ support.

Nothing malicious intended, just frustrated dealing with a problem I didn’t create and can’t seem to get assistance with.

I have 3 main games I play regularly on Steam, which all three total around 50 - 60GB of data when installed.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled Steam and all games I do play (the above 3) on three separate occasions in the last month since this issue with PZ started, and it hasn’t solved the problem.

I can verify PZ or update it when there is an update just fine.

However when any of the workshop mod needs to update, or I need to do an unsubscribe and re-subscribe for one of the mods, this loop issue starts again and won’t stop until I either clear the download cache (which leaves me with an un-downloaded mod) or else I have to re-verify PZ again, which leads me to have to download all mods I have, just cos a single mod won’t download from Steam.

As stated, it’s pretty frustrating to have to deal with this issue out of the blue, and nothing has been changed on my side in how I’ve always installed PZ.

[granite flint]

If you posted on multiple forums you will likely just run into me, if I see several posts on multiple forums I just respond to one, since it would not make sense to respond to all of them with the same answer.

The workshop issue only happens on Project Zomboid right?

Unless you do not use workshop mods on other games?

[crimson juniper]

All good.

[crimson juniper]

Correct.

[crimson juniper]

Unfortunately PZ is the only game which has workshop mods at the moment so I have nothing else to benchmark PZ’s mods against.

[granite flint]

Yeah a benchmark would have been useful just to check if there is any commonality if it would happen with multiple games

What disk is the game installed to? Your main C drive?

[crimson juniper]

During the several installs I reinstalled everything 2 x on the secondary drive (D drive - a HDD with other non-Steam games installed) and on the third install I moved all games to primary drive (C drive - an SSD) and sad to say the issue persists irrespective of which drive is being used as an install drive.

[granite flint]

Have you tried switching the Download Region in the Steam settings as well?

[crimson juniper]

Yeah, I tried all the other troubleshooting steps which are listed, which included the download region, repairing the Steam library, uninstalling the client, the more recent one (after 3rd reinstall of Steam + games) was to try and delete the “Steam\steamapps\workshop\appworkshop_108600” file then to clear download cache and re-log back into Steam.

The only thing that happened after the recent steps above was that out of 6 workshop mod updates 3 managed to download just fine when I unsubscribe and resubscribed. But when I got to the 4th one the start/stop loop showed up again and I couldn’t download the remaining 4 mod updates as I would normally do.

[granite flint]

Hm, I wonder if it happens with specific mods, or does it happen to just totally random mods?

Whether the files in them would be specific, their size, file length and so on

[crimson juniper]

I suspected this at the start, thinking it was a specific mod since it was the only one needing an update at the time, and I reached out to the mod creator but they confirmed that there’s no issue their side, and nobody else on their mod comments section had this issue.

A few days later, after manually having downloaded the mod via SteamCMD (which I often resort to now for PZ mods cos of this issue), I noticed there are more mods needing updates and a totally different mod was doing the same thing.

And it’s been random ever since this issue started.

[granite flint]

Hm, since you mentioned that it started happening after the Steam application update, have you tried opting into a beta Steam update?

Perhaps the issue would be fixed there if it would be a known bug

[crimson juniper]

That I have not tried as yet.

At this point I’m willing to test anything if it’ll get to the bottom of this issue.

[granite flint]

I think it would be worth a try

[crimson juniper]

I’ll give this a shot when I have time and see if it makes any difference.

But the puzzling part is how intermittent it sometimes is, and is not constantly not downloading mod updates.

It’s gone from working all the time, to not working most of time.

[granite flint]

If it doesnt help then it would be best to figure out some sort of commonality to investigate it further

Such as if its always stuck at 94 percent regardless of mods

Or if its stuck at different percentages and so on

[crimson juniper]

Well, one commonality I noticed when it stuck, if I have Chrome closed and I launch a new session of Chrome, the download proceeds for a few seconds but then it goes to the looped state.

I’m not sure how Google Chrome interfaces with Steam, but either way, even with those short bursts of downloading when Chrome is launching, the mod download never completes.

And I have tried totally removing Chrome completely and it didn’t make any change when using other browsers.

The last ditch effort would be to completely reinstall my Windows installation to see if this will maybe help. But this is a stretch, since all other software works fine and no errors were found on the drives or the OS.

[granite flint]

Do you perhaps have any "internet boosters" in the background?

Since some software can cause such issues, some even comes preinstalled with certain laptop models

Asus and such

[crimson juniper]

None at all. It’s on a custom build (oldish) desktop that I installed and maintain myself.

I steer clear of too many additional software that claims to provide “gains” of any kind.

And as an additional check, I did run additional tools to check for any malware (apart from the default Windows Defender that’s installed) and nothing came up with anything malicious on the system, so even that is off the options list.

[granite flint]

So far it sounds like something network related, you said it gets stuck at a certain percentage, but what does the download speed / disk speed show?

In the Steam downloads, does it just hit 0?

[crimson juniper]

It will sit at 0% when there’s a PZ mod download, and remain like that for hours (or days if I left it).

The only slight movement in % happens when I relaunch a fresh session of Google Chrome, but even if it reaches 100% “downloaded” the download doesn’t complete in the Steam downloads window, and maintains the start/stop loop and only showing ”missing installed files” (in red font) as message that shows briefly during the looping.

Here’s a video clip of what the start/stop loop looks like:

[granite flint]

Notice how there is no disk usage, it is as if the files just were not downloaded or could not be downloaded at all

You have the game in the standard Steam path?

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam

[crimson juniper]

Currently yes, it’s in the standard steam path on C drive and it’s still doing the same that it was doing when I had it installed on D Drive.

[granite flint]

You mentioned you disable Windows defender right? How do you exactly do it?

[crimson juniper]

It’s only PZ that does this, because when an update of any other game gets pushed, they start and finish without any disruptions. That includes a PZ game update.

[granite flint]

And can you check if you have Controlled Folder Access enabled in the Windows defender?

Regardless of the real time protection

[crimson juniper]

But the moment it’s a PZ workshop mod download then it becomes like this.

[crimson juniper]

I click on the Windows Defender icon (bottom right) and disable real-time protection, cloud-delivered protection, automatic sample protection and tamper protection.

Windows Defender icon remain in red for as long as I’m gaming (Steam and non-Steam games) then I enable everything when I’m done gaming.

[crimson juniper]

This is not enabled.

[granite flint]

How about reputation based protection?

There are a lot more protection settings than the standard 4

Such as SmartScreen and so on

Generally Windows Defender is really good at its job, but I would not rule it out with this weird instance

[crimson juniper]

This one is on.

[crimson juniper]

Including this one.

[granite flint]

You can try messing with those settings, since it looks to me as if something is just outright blocking the files, or messing with the download, or some kind of permission issue

I doubt this would be PZ specific

It is not like PZ has some sort of special Workshop rules, its the same as any, and PZ mods are mostly just text / lua files

Which should not get marked by anything as malicious

[crimson juniper]

To be honest I believe (deep down inside) that it’s a Steam issue and their support is not owning up to this issue.

[crimson juniper]

I’ll add disabling all of these settings also, and see if I can just do a simple unsubscribe and resubscribe on any mod that doesn’t need an update.

This used to work just fine, but has now become broken for some odd reason.

With all the Windows Defender settings disabled, I went to the most recent mod that had an update, clicked unsubscribe, waited a minute or so, clicked resubscribe and nothing is happening. No download no error no movement whatsoever.

[granite flint]

Even when you restart the Steam client?

[crimson juniper]

Yep. Before I did the unsubscribe and resubscribe, I cleared browser cache which logs me out of Steam and restarts.

I log back in, and then do an unsubscribe and resubscribe on a mod, and nothing happens as stated, even after waiting several minutes to see if a mod download starts.

Then I exit out of Steam, and also restart the computer totally (Steam client starts with Windows), and still the download of the recently subscribed mod doesn’t start.

[granite flint]

Can you copy your full folder path to the Workshop folder here?

Just to check something

[crimson juniper]

Meaning to where PZ is installed correct?

@granite flint - the local files are in:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\ProjectZomboid

The mods are sitting in:

C:\Users<MY USER NAME>\Zomboid\mods

[granite flint]

Looks good

Some users had the steamapps folder named as SteamApps

Which caused some weird issues

[crimson juniper]

Cool.

[granite flint]

Not sure how to help you though, not something I have ever come across

And even google isnt helpful since they just recommend the standard stuff such as clearing the download cache and what not

Weird that launching google chrome moves it a bit, I would personally probably latch on to that and see if clearing the google cache or using a different browser does anything

[crimson juniper]

Yeah, I tried these, and even completely uninstalled Chrome, and it didn’t change anything.