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Forum Discussion

folder's avatar
folder
Explorer | Level 4
8 months ago
Solved

"Installation failed. The Dropbox installation failed to start" error on Windows 11

Dropbox has worked fine for many years on my Lenovo Thinkpad X1, then suddenly stopped working. The link on the start menu became inactive. Starting Dropbox from dropbox.exe directly said the install...
desktop
Error Messages
windows
  • MasterHD's avatar
    MasterHD
    5 months ago

    I had the same error:

    Installation failed. The Dropbox installation failed to start.

    I also could not run Dropbox nor uninstall it!
    I asked ChatGPT to troubleshoot with me. After spending an hour cleaning registries, folders, repairing, safe-mode, etc. I then tried running the standalone installer from the command prompt with a flag to try and view log output. I started my command prompt and navigated to the location of my installer exe, then ran:

    "Dropbox 228.4.5567 Offline Installer.x64.exe" /log DropboxInstallLog.txt

    This failed even sooner but at least produced an error code 0x80040c01.

    ChatGPT realized this may be an issue with Google Update components. It suggested doing a silent install with the /S flag:

    "Dropbox 228.4.5567 Offline Installer.x64.exe" /S

    And this worked immediately!

folder's avatar
folder
Explorer | Level 4
8 months ago

There has not been an answer to why stable build 222.4.5042 produces either:

OR the same installation error reported in the start of this thread.

Nancy's avatar
Nancy
Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
8 months ago

Hey folder, hope you don’t mind if I jump in here. You don’t happen to use Windows 11 in S mode, correct?

  • folder's avatar
    folder
    Explorer | Level 4
    8 months ago

    I do not think so. It is Windows 11 Pro 24H2.

    • Megan's avatar
      Megan
      Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
      8 months ago

      Hey folder, let me also jump in here! 

      Do you get the error on the screenshot, right when you're about to run the .exe file? 

      In any case, can I send you an email, in order for us to have a closer look into this?

      • folder's avatar
        folder
        Explorer | Level 4
        8 months ago

        Windows asks if I want the program to make changes to the computer. Answer yes and the message dropbox installer failed to start appears.

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