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Dropbox keeps trying to download and sync files set to online only
I had this same issue with a particular folder when I first set up my new Windows 10 laptop, but closing and restarting Dropbox seemed to fix it. (Derp.) Today it randomly started trying to downl...
Hey guess what! It's doing it AGAIN!
It used to be safe for me to run Dropbox late at night, it would only try to download online-only stuff earlier in the day. No clue why, nobody has ever managed to explain this problem. Now, there are no longer any "safe" hours. It's currently past 1AM and here's Dropbox, repeatedly attempting to download online-only folders of MP4s. I was not browsing these folders. I was not trying to view or open these files. There is no background program trying to use them or open them. These files were not recently opened. In fact these files were never even opened on this computer (I saved them to the computer from my tablet). I have my "Recent Files" turned off but was not looking at that page anyway. My antivirus is not scanning anything currently. I'm not indexing, and even if I were, these folders are excluded. All the same old, same old "solutions" that are offered yet don't pertain to this particular situation. And now, I can't even be assured it won't try it at whatever random hour of the day OR night.
It's tried to download these same online-only folders about 7-8 times tonight so far. I have to literally keep the folder open, hovering over the subfolders in question, to keep resetting them to online only over and over and over...and remember to pause Dropbox should I leave the room, because I'll come back and find all this stuff on my hard drive again.
And there it goes again.
I've been reporting this bug for like three years now. It's an obvious Windows 10 incompatibility. Considering that Windows 11 is now out (no, I don't want to switch), you'd think it could be fixed, maybe...?
And there it goes again.
EDIT: I notice it keeps starting out with telling me it failed to download the file because it couldn't connect to Dropbox. I know in the past when it did something like this, it seemed to be downloading thousands of files, yet it was just syncing them and they remained online only. So this time, I decided to wait and see if anything actually downloaded or if it was just syncing something? (Even though these should already be synced.)
No such luck. After the first failed one, it tried to download another, said it was successful...then said it was OPENING it!
These are MP4s with sensitive content I don't want just randomly opening on my computer. Downloading is one thing--why would it be trying to OPEN it??
(It also used to stop acting up after a while...here I am over a half hour in and it's still trying to download. I'm so tired of this. First one folder, but now another folder, always the same one, over and over and over and over...WHY?)
Yeah, same here... for me, it's been like 3 years too. I've basically resigned myself to this being life with Dropbox. It's either that or switch to another cloud provider. Some days, I just keep the Windows Explorer page open, then every time Dropbox starts trying to make stuff offline again, I just go and tell it "Make online only" again... and a few minutes later, again... and later, again.
I just now had Dropbox syncing paused "indefinitely"--the only solution that worked before--and started getting repeated errors from Windows informing me that hundreds of files were failing to download. I had to completely close Dropbox just to stop the messages from coming.
DROPBOX WAS FREAKING PAUSED. WHY IS IT TRYING TO DOWNLOAD WHEN PAUSED INDEFINITELY??
Hi Rachel,
Just checking, are you running Trend Micro anti virus software by any chance?HydraLogic Somehow I missed this reply, and now it's months later. But yes, I'm running Trend Micro antivirus.
I am very confident that Trend Micro is causing the problem for you. I had the exact same issue. I spent months testing and tracking the problem. Trend micro has a executable called inspect.exe that scans files and triggers DropBox.
My advice is to fully unistall Trend Micro and install another virus protrector.
Its time to get this done and move on with your life.
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