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johndoe789's avatar
johndoe789
Helpful | Level 5
7 years ago
Solved

Dropbox Stuck at "starting" and "checking for changes"

Hi all, Since 11th December 2018, my Dropbox application on my mac has syncing issues. The status on my Dropbox application would either say "Starting" and "Checking for changes" when I restarted i...
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  • johndoe789's avatar
    johndoe789
    7 years ago

    Hi Lusil,

    I found out what was wrong, my macbook SSD has been degraded recently (only able to perform 90MB/s write, 700MB/s read). Once I ease off the background tasks, Dropbox was able to start syncing the files.

    I hope that in the future Dropbox app will include a diagnostic tool to show what's exactly is happening. This took me a week to figure out the issue.

Lusil's avatar
Lusil
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
7 years ago
Sorry to hear that, johndoe789. 
 
Initially, I’d recommend checking this article out for a few more suggestions on the matter. Could you also please ensure that you don’t have any symlinks in your Dropbox folder that could affect the performance of the desktop app (check out step 7 of this link for more info)? 
 
Let me know what you find!
johndoe789's avatar
johndoe789
Helpful | Level 5
7 years ago

Hi Lusil,

Thank you for your reply. I did perform a symlink search and none turns up.

I have reduced the number of files in the dropbox again to sub 200k files and lets see how it goes.

Do you have any idea when the next dropbox update may come out? Maybe a new upgrade could fix it

  • Lusil's avatar
    Lusil
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    7 years ago
    Thanks for the swift reply, johndoe789. 
     
    I’m afraid there isn’t a specific timeline for the next update of the desktop app, but you can find more info here. In the meantime, I’d recommend an advanced reinstall, where you can apply the selective sync settings before syncing starts. 
     
    Let me know how it goes!
    • johndoe789's avatar
      johndoe789
      Helpful | Level 5
      7 years ago

      Hi Lusil,

      I found out what was wrong, my macbook SSD has been degraded recently (only able to perform 90MB/s write, 700MB/s read). Once I ease off the background tasks, Dropbox was able to start syncing the files.

      I hope that in the future Dropbox app will include a diagnostic tool to show what's exactly is happening. This took me a week to figure out the issue.

      • Lusil's avatar
        Lusil
        Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
        7 years ago
        Thanks for letting me know, johndoe789, I’m glad to hear that you were able to get to the bottom of this. 
         
        I’m more than happy to pass your comments along to the dev team for future consideration and if you have any other questions in the future, don’t hesitate to give us a shout. 
         
        In the meantime, have a wonderful day ahead! 

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