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Dropboxcleanup.exe has stopped working - Windows 8.1
I get the popup error message "Dropboxcleanup.exe has stopped working" about once every hour. This has been happening in the last 12 hours so I assume there's been a recent update. I'm on 168.4.4802....
I suppose what's best depends on whether or not Dropbox support finally address the problem /properly/.
In the short term, if we assume that the scheduled tasks that get run have to continue running (I mean, you don't want Dropbox to stop applying updates to itself) then deleting the scheduled tasks is not sensible. You could possibly change them though so that they don't run during your normal working hours.
One of them only runs once per day (but it's possible that one of the things it does is make sure that the definition of the other scheduled tasks is still present, and possibly also, 'correct').
The other one is defined to run once (at the same time as the first one) plus 23 more times at hourly intervals. It's not possible (at least not in W8.1) to make it run eg every 6 hours, though I suspect it could be made to start at whatever is the time of day one stops working and then only run hourly for a smaller number of times. But it might well get redefined by the other scheduled task even if one does that, and if it does one would need to edit its definition every day.
Another possibility is to provide Dropbox with a file named "DropboxCleanup.exe" which IS a program, but is not the cleanup one. I have two small programs both of which do absolutely nothing when run and are designed (if that's the word) to be used in situations where a named program must exist (for some application to work properly) but one doesn't want anything to happen when they are run. I'll experiment and see if I can get Dropbox to run either or both of these rather than the real cleanup program.
There is a problem with this, which is that for all we know, DropboxCleanup might actually be doing a whole set of things properly and then after those - maybe - having the DLL error and stopping. Replacing it with a dummy program means it won't do anything at all.
Well I read everything and all of us started getting the pop up error in March 2023, same for me. Obvious that Dropbox pushed out an auto update that was not correct. I am going to not spend one more second of my time on this and just ignore the pop up until Dropbox pushes out a fix. HELLO DROPBOX - Fix your stuff.
I've raised this whole issue as a formal support ticket, but - so far - only had the basic "level 1" non-technical response. I'll let you all know if anything sensible / useful comes of this.
This might be a clue to the problem. My Windows 7 computer is scheduled for automatic backup once a week. It takes several hours to complete. Last weekend I had to manually stop the backup before it was complete so I could shut-down the computer. The next time I started up this computer, the Dropboxcleanup.exe error message appeared--for the first time in several weeks. I closed the error message, and performed the Windows Backup. When it was finished I rebooted the computer and received no Dropbox error message. Its been four days and no error messages have appeared. It dawned on me that when I first got the error message a few weeks ago, the Windows 7 backup process had been interrupted as well, although I can't recall the specifics of that incident.
Someone wrote earlier that he or she was getting the error message on a Windows 10 machine. I'd be curious to know that person uses the Windows 7 backup procedure that comes with Windows 10.Hope this helps.
In the early stages of my ticket (in which I mentioned both the W7 and W8.1 issues) the Dropbox first-leve rep referred me to https://help.dropbox.com/installs/system-requirements and said that Win 7 isn't supported. I've only just looked there (because MY problem is with W8.1 and a different DLL than yours) and yet that page says W7 /is/ supported.
What does that tell us about the competence of Dropbox support staff?
- Megan
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hi Jeremy N.2, I hope you're doing well!
Could you kindly reply back with your ticket number reference, in order for me to locate it on our end?
Keep me posted!
It's 21779445.
- Megan
Hi Jeremy N.2, thank you for this!
I was able to successfully locate your ticket, and I can see that it's now in the hands of our Advanced agents. Have you tried the latest steps they provided?
I'd also suggest that you respond back to them with any concerns you might have, in order for them to be able to guide you, and give you the appropriate next steps.
I'm not going to do a reinstall. The whole point of this complaint is to get the problem fixed at your end so that when the scheduled update happens all the affected users' Dropbox application fix themselves.
The problem isn't a showstopper, just very annoying.
Some of the other people in this discussion tried multiple reinstalls which did not work because the problem had not been fixed at your end. If the latest release does fix the problem then we'll all find that out when our applications auto-update. There's no need for a manual reinstall. Why does no-one understand this?
I think I am being ignored in both this forum discussion and the ticket I raised.
Does anyone know how to get a problem escalated to people who understand technical issues, rather than those who just follow scripted responses (that in this case CANNOT solve the problem)?
I believe this might be because api-ms-win-core-heap-l2-1-0.dll is not on windows 7 at all. There's a lot more programs starting to use this win-core api in general, I've never seen any of these api dlls on win7 and am seriously thinking it might be a win10 thing. I'll be upgrading my rig at some point this year but this is annoying, and I'm seriously just thinking about uninstalling dropbox as I haven't used it in quite some time anyway. But, this might actually mean that win7 might no longer be supported by complete accident, so I don't know what the programmers have done. This is not a reinstalling issue, as Jeremy has said. This will keep on coming up, and I actually don't even know if it can be fixed for win7 users at all. I really hope I'm wrong.
Hello!
I'm on W8.1, not W7 - the W7 users seem to have a problem with a different DLL.
It shoudn't matter though about what's on W7 or W8.1 itself(**) - as (as far as I can see) every other DLL that Dropbox uses is shipped inside the application ... and that includes an older version of the api-ms-win-core-heap dll (at least, assuming that's what the slightly different numbers at the rh end of the filename mean).
** asuming always that the functions which the DLL in turn invokes are supported.
