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Jerald E.'s avatar
Jerald E.
New member | Level 2
10 years ago
Solved

Dropbox has two entries in my PC Startup - Why?

Some of my computers have two startup entries for dropbox.  If you open Task Manager - Startup, there are two things using PC resources at startup.  The first one appears as "Dropbox (3)."  That is t...
desktop
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  • gaspeer's avatar
    gaspeer
    9 years ago

    I received this support response to my support ticket last month. I didn't think to post it here, although I think I alerted the support person who sent me this answer of this forum discussion and thought he might share this information. Short answer to these questions regarding multiple Dropbox instances -- it's normal. Longer answer, I will cut and paste this information from Dropbox support:

     

    Frank, Aug 8, 6:54 AM PDT:

    Hi Garold,

    Thank you for contacting Dropbox!

    I can confirm that it is expected to see multiple Dropbox processes in task manager when Dropbox is running. The Dropbox application needs these additional components to monitor that everything is running correctly and that the desktop application is always healthy and up to date. The additional processes should consume a negligible amount of CPU and memory resources. If they are causing any performance issues on your computer please let me know.

    Thank you for reaching out with this query, I hope this helps.

    Regards,
    Frank

     

    Hope that support info will be helpful to others finding this discussion!

    Gary

kdb's avatar
kdb
New member | Level 2
9 years ago

What was ultimately the issue?

Jane's avatar
Jane
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
9 years ago
Hey @kdb & all, 
 
I'm just updating this thread with the possible cause, as well as the resolution that was suggested. 
 
It's possible that an invalid registry key was causing more than one processes to load during startup. To resolve that, I’d suggest a full re-installation of the software. Please follow the steps below: 
 
#1. Quit Dropbox by clicking on the Dropbox icon on your system tray, then click on the gear icon and select "Quit Dropbox".
 
#2. Uninstall Dropbox:
 
#3. When the uninstall finishes, please restart your computer to ensure that the uninstall is complete.
 
#4. After this, please proceed to delete remaining registry entries:
 
a) Click the Start button. Type REGEDIT in the search box and press Enter.
 
b) In the Registry Editor, navigate into the following locations until you find the keys for "Dropbox" and "DropboxUpdate", they will be in either or both of the following two locations:
 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\
 
c) In both or either of these folders, please delete only the "Dropbox" and "DropboxUpdate" folders by right-clicking on the individual folders and selecting "Delete".
 
#5. Then, please delete the Dropbox remaining folders:
 
a) Open a Windows File Explorer (not Internet Explorer). 
 
b) Type %LOCALAPPDATA% into the address bar (include the % percent signs) and press enter. 
 
c) Delete the folder "Dropbox" from the resulting window. 
 
d) Please repeat these steps with the following folders as well (it's OK if you don't find a Dropbox folder in any of those locations): 
 
%APPDATA% 
%PROGRAMFILES% 
%PROGRAMFILES(x86)% 
e) Then restart your system.
 
Please note that deleting any of these folders will not delete the files in your Dropbox folder.
 
#6. Download the newest version of Dropbox and double click on the downloaded file 
 
#7. During the initial setup and sign in process apply any Selective Sync settings you may have had prior to the reinstall and select the Dropbox folder location (if not in the default location).
 
IMPORTANT NOTE: Because this process removes the previous settings and configuration, if you wish to avoid re-downloading your Dropbox content you will need to manually choose the location for Dropbox to sync to, otherwise you will create a new Dropbox folder and start to download your content again.
 
At the end of this process, after clicking "Open my Dropbox folder", it might take some time to re-index the files and sync any pending changes. Please note that any changes made to the files in the Dropbox folder, the web interface or other linked devices while the folder was "off-line" may generate conflicted copies.
 
Hope this is helpful to you, please let me know the results here! 
 
Warm regards, 
JaneA
  • troyerj's avatar
    troyerj
    Explorer | Level 4
    9 years ago

    I will actually be doing this tomorrow or over the weekend so I'll post the results then

    • Jane's avatar
      Jane
      Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
      9 years ago

      Hey troyerj, 

       

      Please keep me updated on how this works for you! 

       

      Thanks, 

      JaneA

      • gaspeer's avatar
        gaspeer
        Helpful | Level 6
        9 years ago
        Hi JaneA,

        I'm a longtime Dropbox user, and bought the "Pro" subscription a few months ago. I have about 120-140 gigs of data in my Dropbox.

        I was first aware of this "Dropbox-three-times-in-my-Startup" issue just a couple of months ago. Only the first of the three instances is a bona fide startup, with a button to "Enable/Disable." The other two instances are just there.

        I went carefully through your instructions above and after restarting my computer (an HP laptop -- a pretty low-end, bargain priced puter, but a new one nevertheless) it showed only the one instance in Startup.

        So -- it seems to have worked.

        BUT, alas, later this evening when I did a restart for some other software -- the three instances of Dropbox were right back!

        Gary

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