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Disable automatic updates
How can I prevent dropbox from automatically updating itself? The new dropbox 3 has a very anti-windows-7 UI that I don't like, so I reinstalled 2.10. How do I stop dropbox from continually install...
Stephan F.'s solution works brilliantly for me in both a Win 7 Pro and an XP Pro environment. The key is certainly the secpol.msc security policy preventing the automatic upgrade from executing.
My problem was that 3.6.7 stopped reliably syncing on the XP based VM, and the newer beta releases similarly failed. You already know the drill when I uninstalled Dropbox and re-installed earlier versions -- 30 minutes later I'm dragged back kicking and screaming to 3.6.7, but now with hundreds of "conflicted" files to deal with. I finally saw Stephan's answer and decided to try it by dropping all the way back to 2.10.52.
When installing 2.10.52 I disabled the two upgrade services that it registers, and deleted the upgrade "helper" exe and added the security policy per Stephan's instructions. The security policy totally prevents 2.10.52 from executing the downloaded upgrades (even though its is apparently regularly trying hard to do so). Note that even though the "hover over" system tray/notification area pop-up status balloon may say that Dropbox is upgrading, it is in fact not doing so. And the 2.10.52 syncing is continuing despite the upgrading message (which eventually clears).
All is well. Nice work Stephan!
