I have an FH4 installation that came up with the Syncing Data dialog on launch. That is odd, since the prior instance of the game had been shut down cleanly. The data sync was still stuck a 0% overnight, and after 8+ hours, it seems pretty clear it is not making forward progress. So, the question is, what is the best way to terminate this sync to minimize the potential for damage to my account, if it’s not already too late? I do have some recent copies of the game save directory, in case of emergency, but that seems risky, and probably should be a last resort. Has anyone resolved this scenario in a non-destructive manner? Thanks.
I’ve had this issue myself. Let me think what I did.
First, I don’t believe the game is syncing at all so that if you simply kill it off (alt+F4 if you’re on a PC), it won’t have any impact on its current state.
Before you restart the game (again, I’m assuming you’re on a PC), check the xbox app to make sure you’re logged on. If you have the xbox console companion, do the same (and click on your icon to make sure your profile appears). Check the game bar (Windows key + G) to make sure there are no issues there. I’ve been logged on to one of these to find I wasn’t logged on to one or more of the others.
Follow these steps every time you play the game (really). I lost all my progress last December since when, I’ve gone through these steps every time and haven’t had any issues. (But also, the game no longer tries syncing when I start playing it; I don’t know whether I should be concerned.)
If you do have to go through a lengthy sync again, and it gets to 100% (with much waiting at this point) and then declares that the sync has failed, click on Play offline. Each time I’ve done that, the game is back to normal with everything as I left it.
If you’re on an xbox, I’d at least terminate the game. I’m not sure whether there’s an xbox app on an xbox, but check that you’re logged in to the MS game system.
I hope this might help in some way. I note the servers have been behaving quirkily again in the past few days.
Thanks for the suggestions. I have checked connectivity on the Xbox app, Console Companion app, and Game Bar, and everything looks okay there. MS Store pushed out another 517MB update, I’m not sure what it addresses, since I had the series update already installed. Unfortunately, when I run the game now, it is just sitting on the load screen, orbiting the Senna. It did not put up the sync dialog this time, and it is not erroring out, but it still appears to be stuck.
Okay, I did get it working again. But instead of continuing with the install that would not sync, I loaded the cloud version of the game instead. It gave the message that my device was taking a long time to sync, and gave the option of using the Cloud save or the last saved instance on the cloud implementation. I selected the Cloud save, since it was only 1 day out-of-date. I did lose all the progress I made yesterday, except for rivals and online adventure, but otherwise everything else was intact. I also found that vinyl and livery import appears to work on the cloud version, which could be a great workaround for the import problem we have been seeing on non-XBox Series platforms. I have since sync’d the cloud progress into another Windows system, but will probably do a clean install on the system that was having the sync problem, since I’m not sure I trust it. Thank you for your help.