It turned out the issue was the USB reader on my laptop doesn't correctly see the device. I made sure it had the latest drivers after and it still didn't work. It would recognize the drive for about 4 seconds, and then the drive would be one 100% inaccessible. Same problem even with AV disabled. When I tried a different laptop, it is recognized as a USB device and I could update the payload.bin files with no problem. Very strange but I vaguely remember having this issue withe the same laptop several years ago.
It is an Alienware 17 R3 laptop. Yes. Old. Still very functional but not for more modern games. Don't care about that though.
