My Dropbox app is stuck syncing files on Windows 11 after an advanced reinstall.

Hey jasper, thanks for the update and the feedback here. I'll make sure to pass your comments along to our team.

Thanks. If it's of any use, the update that rolled out today with the new folder icons has not changed the situation besided settling on a different number of files stuck syncing. The log files are still piling up so fast that I've got to quit the program at startup or it'll crash my system within an hour or so.

Jasper B.3​ Hey there, just circling back after the holiday weekend to update you that your case is actively being looked into. The details are beyond the scope of something I can personally help out with here in a public forum but I wanted to provide some reassurance that you have not been forgotten. Thank you for the remarkable patience you've shown thusfar.

Thanks. I'm waiting three more days for a new SSD I bought to be delivered to backup my local dropbox folder before erasing it. This will have taken at least two weeks without access to sync, during which I've had to put my business on hold.

I haven't heard anything from Support but they've advised me to reinstall. Which I'm not going to do until I can at least backup what I have synced in case of conflicts that could occur when trying to get sync working again. In the meantime it would be great to get some kind of confirmation that you could look into the way the software generates log files. In no circumstances should dropbox be silently filling your boot drive with 100's of GB's of hidden log files per day. It shold handle such situations more gracefully, instead of crashing a user's entire system. Support told me it was "expected behaviour" due to the amount of files I had. That is a shockingly poor stance to take.

Sorry to see that you're also having issues with your syncing, BuddyJames.

Can you let us know which version of the Dropbox app you're using, what the exact sync status is when hovering over the Dropbox icon and what your computer's OS and version is?

Thanks.

I understand where you're coming from Jasper B.3​, and I deeply appreciate your patience throughout troubleshooting.

Running an advanced reinstall will reset cached settings and configuration, which essentially ensure a fresh start. 

Assuming you want to give it a try, before you proceed, we'd recommend the following:

1. Taking a screenshot of which folders you haven't allowed to sync to your desktop in the selective sync settings.
2. Double-check the de-selected folders on your device to see which ones still appear before your attempts to de-select folders.

Rest assured that I completely understand your concerns about the selective sync conflicts and ideally, I'd recommend having everything sync anew by utilizing selective sync upon installation (choosing specific folders to sync).

In the meantime, if you haven't already, please also ensure that there's no interference with your security or firewall software.

Aside from that, I can see that you've already tried contacting our support team, so I went ahead and added an internal note into your ticket with a summary of our discussion so far.

We are having the same issue in our studio. Trying to setup a new department, new systems, consolidate files. Re-installed as instructed. Tried to re-sync a reasonable number of files - endless sync. More than enough space on the new drives.

You're welcome for the info. Glad to have spent the week testing for you! :)

Could you tell me why I would want to do this complex seeming 'advanced reinstall', vs a regular uninstall then erase of the dropbox folder followed by reinstall? 

I'm not willing to risk selective sync conflicts as that has caused huge issues in the past, and it sounds like this process could end up causing them.

This is only making things more confusing. The goal is not to reduce folders, that was what support advised me to do because sync has been stuck for days. The goal is to get sync working again.

Hey Jasper B.3, thanks for the additional info here.

Actually, since the end goal is to reduce the folders in your Dropbox folder, can you try our advanced reinstall process, if you haven't already and let us know how it goes?

I have already been monitoring the program to stop it crashing for over five days (if I don't delete dropbox logs and empty trash every 30 minutes or so, either dropbox or my computer will crash). It's like trying to stop a leaking boat from sinking. At this point I'm going to cut my losses and uninstall and just hope my 3.2TB of data is intact.

To be clear, the 100's of GB's of log files being created in

C: \Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Dropbox\logs\1

every few hours are bringing my system to a halt, causing programs to corrupt save files, and I can't afford any more downtime to debug dropbox and risk the stability of a 14 year project. 

Could you advise what will happen if I uninstall at this point?