Dropbox stopped executing, restarted it and I can't specify my Dropbox folder

Hi rossmcm, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

You can have the Dropbox desktop application detect the Dropbox folder by performing an advanced reinstallation, and during the installation, choose the advanced settings, to select the location of your old Dropbox folder. 

Make sure to select the parent folder (which should be C: for you), and it should detect the old folder. It will need to reindex it to check for file changes, but it wouldn't need to redownload all the files. 

Keep me updated with any progress!

Thanks Jay.  I found a post from Rich that details a sequence that doesn't involve all those registry tweaks.  Also I was using Ninite to re-install and I wasn't offered the advanced reinstallation, so maybe I'll start again using the Dropbox.com install.

I'm sort of in a half-way no-mans land now.

• I uninstalled Dropbox
• Renamed C:\Dropbox to Dropbox-old
• Installed it with Ninite
• Paused Sync
• Went into Settings and moved it from C:\users\Ross to C:\

That's when I read your reply, so currently, I have:

• Dropbox sync is paused
• my original files are still at C:\Dropbox-Old
• My newly moved folder at C:\Dropbox

By the time I paused sync Dropbox had created a few of the folders in the root, but no files apart from a few desktop.ini's.

Before I saw your post I was poised to move the contents of c:\Dropbox-old to c:\Dropbox and stand well clear.   Are those registry mods necessary in my case?  If they are, then Rich's post is a little incomplete.

So what is the suggestion at this point?  Uninstall again and follow the advanced install instructions?

Many thanks for the assistance.

Hi there rossmcm - sorry to jump in here.

At this point, I'd suggest following Jay's suggestion for an advanced reinstall as this would be the safest way to go. 

If you stumble upon an issue during that process, please let us know and we'll take it from there. 

Thanks, Walter - I shall.  I'm still unsure about the registry tweaks - whether they are part of this install process?

Hey rossmcm, if you'd like to make sure you're following the correct steps for the advanced reinstall, you can find them below and please make sure to follow them exactly as they are:

https://help.dropbox.com/installs/advanced-reinstall 

Hi Hannah,

I've followed the instructions as detailed three times now, and the end result is the same.   I uninstall dropbox, restart the PC, nuke the registry entries and folders, download the installer, open it (I don't "run as administrator" as the directions say not to, I just click on the installer exe, but it still asks if I want to run it.  It downloads the app, then spends ages installing it, but I never get to see anything that looks remotely like "Advanced settings during the download prompts" - it just goes away and installs it in the wrong place.

Did anyone ever think of something along the lines of "Oh, I see you already seem to have a dropbox folder. shall I resume your installation with that one?"

Well, after 20 minutes of "Installing" it just finished with this:

So the next rabbit hole is the offline installer.  No, that seems to have decided to download something as well, despite being billed as not needing the internet.

We are now back to the:

which is looking more like a cruel joke.  If it were going to give me the opportunity to influence the installation in some way it should have done so by now, I'm not prepared to wait another 20 minutes to be disappointed.

Look, I appreciate the help, I really do, but you folks need to know that this must be happening to other people as well.

A quick trawl of the forums shows plenty of customers reporting the "I tried to move my dropbox folder to where it was and it wouldn't let me" problem.  That's where you need to start.  And the solution shouldn't involve any registry modifications, deletion of folders that might or might not be present (update - I just received this again:   

)

It's a simple enough issue.  The fix might be complex, but you shouldn't load that complexity onto your customers - only you know how to carry it out safely and reliably.  

It is 2:40am.  I've spent hours on this over the last 3 days.  

Sorry for jumping in here, rossmcm, but is it OK to log a ticket for you, and look into this internally? 

Since we don’t have account visibility on the forum, it may be easier to investigate this way.

Hi Nancy,

Whatever works is fine by me. 

I'm now having difficulty deleting the folder Program Files (x86)\Dropbox:

(this is immediately after an uninstall and a restart).  I had a poke around and there were 40 handles like this:

explorer.exe pid: 20040 type: Section P50\Ross 103C: \Device\NamedPipe\DropboxDataPipe

I also noticed the service DbxSvc is still there and running.  I stopped the service to see if that might allow me to delete the x86\Dropbox folder but no dice - it still won't let me delete it, saying there are files or folders open again.

My next hunch was whether the problems were due to a browser window logged into the account in the Dropbox Web interface, so I logged out, closed all browser windows and tried to reinstall from the offline installer again.

So far it's looking like it always has,

• initializing, ...
• connecting to the Internet, ...
• waiting to download Dropbox...
• installing dropbox ... (for 10-15 minutes now)

no sign of any advanced installer options

Aaahh... Oh:

---

Nancy wrote:

Sorry for jumping in here, rossmcm, but is it OK to log a ticket for you, and look into this internally? 

 

Since we don’t have account visibility on the forum, it may be easier to investigate this way.

---

• Hi Hannah,

   

  I've done that a couple of times, but here goes:

   

  • Started Dropbox 186.4.6207 Offline Installer.x86.exe.  It shows as executing in Task Manager but memory used is static at 764k and no CPU.  It did download a lump of stuff at the start but it has indicated no activity at all - no UAC snag, no splash screen, no progress bar.
  • Ahh!  after 10 minutes a UAC dialogI 
  • Initializing, please wait...
  • Connecting to the internet...
  • Installing Dropbox...
  • Now your instructions state: "3. Reinstall Dropbox and select the location that you want for the Dropbox folder."  At no time during this process do I get that opportunity. 
  • So now it has finished installing and at the "continue to your browser to sign in"
  • I now quit dropbox.  Now at this point it hasn't asked me where I want the dropbox, so I know it will have put it at C:\Users\<me>\Dropbox, and yes, there is an empty folder there.
  • I restart Dropbox, and pause sync.
  • Preferences/Sync/Move Dropbox folder,  Select c:\.... BOOM! Dropbox crashes.
  • Dropbox auto-restarts, I pause sync again, Preferences/Sync/Move to c:\, this time it accepts it.  I'm now further ahead than I have been any time over the last week.
  • Sync is still paused.  I exit the app just to be safe.
  • I drag the contents of C:\dropbox-old into C:\Dropbox
  • I wander off to do some waterblasting, have a meal.  Time remaining is "more than a day".  I'm actually thinking (if that time is accurate) it might have been quicker to sync from the net as normal, particularly as it is going to have to index half a million files when I start syncing again.
  • It finishes the move within an hour or so.
  • A Windows Explorer Properties of the Dropbox folder gives roughly the right number of files, folders, bytes
  • Started the Dropbox app.  Starts indexing 660,000-odd files ...
  • 10 hours later, we are down to 356,000 files
  • eventually it finished indexing, and more importantly, changes to local files and remote files seem to propagate OK to other instances. Now I have a bit of cleaning up conflicted copies...

Just a question - apart from the re-sync, the big time-consumer in this saga was the moving of the files from one folder to another.  A much quicker way would be to delete the new  (empty) C:\Dropbox folder and then rename the original from C:\Dropbox-old to C:\Dropbox - or is that not equivalent in this case (maybe because of hidden files)?

Finally, one for your web dev team.  The preview window I am typing this reply into is annoyingly tiny:

... but the memo has a resize grip at the bottom-right corner (circled).  It doesn't seem to do anything.

Many thanks for all your help.