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Dropbox Log Files
While looking for something else on my 2 Windows 10 PC's, I noticed that there are several hundred log files located at the path:
C:\ProgramData\Dropbox\Update\Log
These range from 2018 dates...
- Hi td47; thanks for posting in Community and happy Monday!
When you have the desktop app installed and running on your computer, the app updater service's logs are stored in the app's data folders; not within your Dropbox account or Dropbox Folder.
You should be safe to delete them without affecting the app's functionality at all.
As for your suggestion in the end of your post, I'd recommend posting it in the relevant section of our Community so other users who find it useful can up-vote it to show their interest,
Let me know if you have any other questions!
Rich
Super User II
Super User II
SuzanneT1 wrote:
I have all the permissions to delete files but the message says âYou need permission to perform this actionâ.
Then you don't have the necessary permissions to delete the files. See my replies earlier in this thread about admins and the SYSTEM account. You may be the admin for your computer, but the SYSTEM account used by Windows is higher than an admin, and it's this account that has the only access to these files.
I need these files deleted.
You can delete them, but you need to do some work on the file permissions before you'll be able to. See my replies above.
Okay - I selected the permissions on the log folder. My laptop has permissions. But if I give the permissions to the user - i get this error
- Rich
SuzanneT1 wrote:
Okay - I selected the permissions on the log folder. My laptop has permissions. But if I give the permissions to the user - i get this error
You're trying to change the permissions on the Update folder (and everything it contains), but it's failing to update the permissions on the Log folder and all of the log files because you don't have permissions to do so. You need to take ownership of not only the folder, but all the files within it, before you can change the permissions.
Quite honestly, if this isn't something you understand or are comfortable with, then you should just leave it be. You can break things if you apply the wrong permissions to certain files or folders, and this really goes beyond the scope of the support provided here. There's very little data stored here and none of it is human-readable. If this is an attempt to save disk space, you're not going to gain much space at all from deleting the log files.
- I do understand permissions. I have an IT background but Iâve never run into a app like this. It does not matter if itâs the update folder the log folder or the log files. It will not let me have permissions. So last question. If I uninstall this app will these files go away.
- Rich
SuzanneT1 wrote:
... Iâve never run into a app like this. ... If I uninstall this app will these files go away.I don't know if Dropbox will clean up the files during an uninstall, and to be clear, it's not Dropbox that's doing this; it's your operating system.
Dropbox has services that run in the background, like many other applications, and these services need a user account in order to run. In most cases, you're not going to create a separate user just to run a service (though some apps do), so Windows runs these services under the System user. Since the service runs as System, it's System that owns and has permissions to any files created by the service.
Take ownership of all the files so System doesn't own them, change the permissions on all the files so you have at least Modify access, and then you'll be able to delete them.
