Dropbox is stuck syncing after an update, what can I do?

So here at the studio the whole **bleep**show is going down aswell. 

• selective sync issues around the board
• everything suddenly started resyncing, 
• massive cpu load makes computer unusuable
• they've been on 24/7 for the past 3 days in the hope that it would fix, but its sloow
• talking about slow, it seems all servers are loaded because of this, because sync is switching between 5h,17h,2d every second.

So i did fix permissions and hardlinks, but still problematic... 

Oh yeah indeed we have 2 or three symlinks running, but they are a fraction of the data and indeed have always been supported...

I've tried downgrading to Dropbox 87 and 86 and nothing changed.

I've tried fixing permissions and fixing hardlinks and neither works. 

My only hope is that Dropbox fixes this SOON SOON SOON!

Ronald H. Daphne confirmed later that backgrading doesn't do anything because the app will just update again.  So I'm puzzled why it was even brought up.

Miraculously, it appears that there has been progress in sync. Of more than 3000 files pending for some time, only 17 now.

Hello everyone! 

Our latest stable is out and you can give it a try. 89.4.278 Let us know your feedback under the stable version post.

This is a long discussion, so to assist all of you the best way possible, having all the information we need, I encourage you to create a ticket with us here and provide us with the ticket number in your next comment. 

If you do have a case with an agent of ours already, we can add helpful notes for them or event take over your case, if possible. 

Super important note.:pushpin:

Please first make sure to try the steps Daphne has offered here. 

Thank you!

Near as I can tell, the new build doesn't solve any of the underlying problems.  I'm still at the same status I've been at the whole time.

It's disappointing that there's so much apparent faith by Dropbox that there's no serious problem and such a lack of transparency about what big changes have occured in sync lately that might be causing a problem.

Nope, no change. Endless "Synching..." without any updates appearing on other computers or on Dropbox web.

Installed this new version yesterday, but no progress. Still "Syncing..." since 16th of January. Tried all @Daphne 's fixes, none has worked. My ticket number is #10206179 

Thank you all for the updates. 

S34W0LF I took over your ticket to investigate personally and I will include more members of my team to the case as well. Thank you. 

Well, I'm kind amazed.

I came to my computer earlier this morning after reading about the 89.x update.  Dropbox wasn't even running on my computer, so I launched it to see what version I had.   It was 89.x, and at startup it looked like the last version, thousands of file indexing and downloading. 

It stayed that way until about a half an hour ago, then I had a major burst of system activity and those index/sync numbers started to come down, and finally I'm back to showing perfectly in sync.

I sure wish we had an explanation as to what was wrong to begin with -- the release notes for 89.x mention nothing about the problems I and others had.  Obviously something significant broke and got fixed.

89.4.278 installed. Daphne 's fixes did not resolve issue. Multiple machines affected and stuck at different upload/download counts. Two machines not affected. Ticket #10198542

I too would like to add that after an automatic update to 89.4.278, followed by continued crashing, and then a reinstallation of the same version, the situation has stabilized and Dropbox has now stayed in sync (and updates changes) for over 24 hours. The memory consumption is higher than before but it stays at least on the same level instead of climbing continuously.

Down to 3 or 4 files syncing, but no actual files synchiing in explorer so those are a mystery.  It works pretty well now, my fight is done.   Good to see that the devs have gotten close to fixing whatever the problem was.

The real story seems to be how help desk handled it, running through the playbook rituals but without revealing the true facts on the ground (ie: buggy release).  Dropbox, you really could do better, we deserve that for the money we pay. 

Thank you for posting about this DanielJ.

AOW1 Located your already escalated case, so since you already have specialized members of my team working with you there I am unable to provide extra steps on my end. However, I see you responded there today and I added feedback and your latest update to 89.4 for my cooleagues to follow up as soon as possible.  

Fiona AOW1 I also had "my case turned over to a specialized team"...like days ago. Yesterday I asked them if they could reply. I got an answer :D The general copy paste thing, how we can help you, etc. Welcome to the dropbox refugee club!

A further update -- I had to log off this computer and log back in, and when I did Dropbox began a total resync cycle (?) again -- a ton of disk activity that's been going on for nearly an hour, even though when I logged out it showed in sync.  There's no apparent networking activity, so I'm guessing this isn't a complete download type resync, just Dropbox local indexes being recreated (again).

So I guess I would have to downgrade my assessment from "appears to be fixed" to "appears to be kind of fixed", as the activity shows something is happening and I assume if it ultimately finished before it will finish again.

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Shawn B.14 wrote:

So I guess I would have to downgrade my assessment from "appears to be fixed" to "appears to be kind of fixed", as the activity shows something is happening and I assume if it ultimately finished before it will finish again.

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LoL
My solution was awfull but worked for me, I asked to be removed of our TEAM dropbox and downloaded everything again, howeer the DL rate was abismal 500kbs someitmes it would jump to impressive 1.5mbps. It almost seems that their infra-structure is completly bottlenecked.

Just want to add my story to this thread, as I realized later that this is probably the same problem.

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Files-folders/Stuck-syncing-Syncing-372-files-Uploading-372-files-can-t-sync/td-p/392023

However, In addition to the stuckness mentioned in this thread, I also currently have a message (from 'dropbox status') that says Can't sync "eclipse_update_120.jpg".Do note that the filename changes while it is doing a re-synch, which it evidently needs to do each time I restart Dropbox - but it now ends up on the same file every time.

A glimmer of hope for me... I was experiencing the endless "Syncing....." with no numbers (no #### uploading, #### downloading, etc.)

The dropbox would be stuck at "Syncing..." for 9 hours, eat all the memory, and then die.

I got to thinking - maybe the memory "leak" is due to an infinitely recursive symlink.

I found a symlink that was something along the lines of..

/America/West/California/SanFrancisco/1234/wwwroot/homepage/images/*Symlink-to-/America*

Which resulted in the possibility to endlessly traverse the symlink:

/America/West/California/SanFrancisco/1234/wwwroot/homepage/images/America/West/California/SanFrancisco/1234/wwwroot/homepage/images/America/West/California/SanFrancisco/1234/wwwroot/homepage/images/America/West/California/SanFrancisco/1234/wwwroot/homepage/images/America/West/California/SanFrancisco/1234/wwwroot/homepage/images/America/West/California/SanFrancisco/1234/wwwroot/homepage/images/America....etc...

This must have caused the new dropbox client to get stuck in a loop, eating endless memory. Key point -- this link has been there for many years and never caused issues for previous dropbox clients.

After changing the symlink so it's not infinitely recurisve, Dropbox client is now showing "Syncing #### files.. #### downloading, #### uploading..." I can only pray it actually completes a full sync.

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s4ndman  escreveu:

Miraculously, it appears that there has been progress in sync. Of more than 3000 files pending for some time, only 17 now.

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I think I praised it too early and since the message above it's stuck at the same count. Tomorrow I will cancel my Plus plan if it is not resolved. Not even feedback from the open ticket (# 10190485) I had.

Thanks Fiona . I was able to complete what was asked of me by support and it has not resolved the issue. I just updated my ticket with additional notes for the support team including some information about something I noticed with .dropbox.cache. Hope to hear back soon.

As posted previously, I was able to get beyond "Syncing..." (with no numbers) by finding and removing the circular symlink reference.

However, now the syncing (with numbers) appears to be going at the speed of a snail:

Syncing 524 files • 2+ days
Uploading 278 files (0.0 KB/sec, 2+ days)
Downloading 246 files (0.1 KB/sec, 2+ days)

I am also using Boxifier app that has the option to prevent Dropbox updates. I have this switched on an using Dropbox 87.4.138. Still no fix or progress: endless "synching" message with no numbers, etc.

My Dropbox was stuck on Syncing since 14 Jan 2020. With the superb assistance of Dropbox livechat I now understand that the change in how Dropbox handles symlinks was the cause of my syncing being stuck.

I had the whole of the contents of my Windows 10 Desktop symlinked to Dropbox. Removing that symlink and Fix Hardlinks plus Fix Permissions resulted in my syncing to become unstuck. I now realise that any changes to my Desktop will no longer be backed up on Dropbox.

Alternatives to automatically backup folders that are outside Dropbox such as the Desktop that I am aware of are Boxifier and Windows 10 File History.

I posted in this thread originally (I think?) but it was moved to 'a more appropriate' thread which apparently has been marked as 'solved'.

My problem is certainly not solved.

I was experiencing a "Starting...", crash, restart, "Starting..." cycle with version 88.4.172.  I was advised to upgrade to 89.4.278 which I did.  Still the same cycle persisted.

Then I used the web settings to unlink the PC in question, uninstalled and reinstalled from scratch.  I setup a selective sync when logging in 'for the first time' and ultimately saw 'Syncing...'.  So I thought I'd give it some time and see what happens.  Well, after about 24 hours it crashed silently and restarted itself and I'm back to the dreaded 'Syncing...'.

It did, however, appear to sync a new file I copied to the DropBox directory on the affected PC.

It may be of interest that this is a Win10 x64 PC.  Another PC of mine running Win7 x64 appears to be working without any issues.

It may further be of interest that a few weeks ago I set a registry key to allow much longer filenames, i.e. Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem\LongPathsEnabled has a value of 1.

For various reasons my development projects have deeply nested directories.  There are no symlinks though, I've run the suggested checks and there are no results.