If you’ve spent any money on the Xbox Live Marketplace, you’re probably familiar with the way things download. Once you pick something to be downloaded, it goes to your “Active Downloads” page, which you can view by pressing the Guide button, and then scrolling all the way to the left. Meanwhile, you can go about doing other things with your console – playing games, browsing the dashboard, chatting with friends, etc. The download will queue up and finish up in the background while you play.

However, with a recent dashboard update, Microsoft seems to have broken this functionality – but only for in-game downloads, like map packs and season pass DLC. You’ll know if you’ve got this glitch because:

The download status never changes into the “Active Downloads” view – you’re stuck looking at a full-screen view of the download progress, with the only option being “Cancel.”

If you check your active downloads, it’s empty.

If you try to use the DLC, it won’t show up as installed at all.

If you go to the “Storage” view and check under the game, the DLC will be marked as “Incomplete”

If you move away from the progress bar view, by pressing Guide, B, or powering off, the download just aborts. Annoying, right? Well, there’s a few fixes I’ve found:

You can just sit and watch the progress bar. This is the easy solution for small DLC downloads, but ugh… Trying to do this with a big DLC (or a bunch at once) is an exercise in frustration.

This is the easy solution for small DLC downloads, but ugh… Trying to do this with a big DLC (or a bunch at once) is an exercise in frustration. You can download it from the Xbox Live Marketplace instead of in-game. Sadly, this doesn’t work for most Season Pass/Map Pack downloads, since they’ll double bill you. (Seriously? C’mon…)

(Seriously? C’mon…) The best workaround I’ve found is to re-download from your Download History. You can go to the Guide, then all the way to the right. Pick “Account Management.” Then, choose “Download History” and then choose to re-download the DLC/maps from this menu. The download will then show up in your Active Downloads and download in the background successfully.

I’ve run into this problem with Borderlands 2 and Halo 4, but I bet it’s also a problem with Black Ops 2. Let’s hope Microsoft patches whatever they broke in the dashboard that is causing this issue…