My Windows desktop app gets stuck at start-up and it never connects to my old Dropbox folder.

Well after all my trials and tribulations, I think I finally got the app installed and working the way it used to. FYI, here are all the steps I went through to finally accomplish it.

Dropbox Re-install

1. Uninstalled app
2. Logged out of Dropbox on chrome browser
3. Rebooted PC
4. Went online to Dropbox.com and from Get App, selected Desktop App
5. Pressed blue Install button and a new copy of DropboxInstaller.exe popped up in my browser downloads “save as” window.
6. Hit save and open (maybe this is my first misstep) and a User account control window popped up asking if it was allowed to make changes to my device. I hit Yes. And a progress bar indicating downloading, then installing showed up. Should I have closed my browser and just run the .exe installer?
7. After several seconds, a “welcome to Dropbox” sign in window showed up.
8. Pressed the sign in button and a new browser tab with sign in or sign up window was opened.
9. Entered my user name and password and a welcome back window popped up.
10. Meanwhile noticed in the hidden icons that a blacked out entry indicating Dropbox 233.4.4938 had shown up indicating, “waiting to be linked to a Dropbox account”. Why didn’t the sign in I just did link the app to my account?
11. On the pop up welcome window hit “next” and window changed to upgrade offer, selected Keep Basic Plan and window changed to open Dropbox, advanced settings window.
12. This time I just went with open Dropbox. Should I have done advanced settings here?
13. Pop up disappeared and a progress pop up briefly showed up on the bottom right of my display. The main browser window updated to show “successfully logged in”. Not sure what got successfully logged in here, since the app was still indicating  waiting to link.
14. Progress pop up went away pretty shortly thereafter and the welcome to Dropbox window popped up me to sign in or sign up again.
15. This is where it gets lost. I have an open Dropbox button on the main browser window and the new welcome to Dropbox sign in or sign up pop up window again. The hidden icon still says waiting to be linked to a Dropbox account.
16. Not really sure why there is an open Dropbox button on the main window, but I think that might just be for web browser access, so I went with the second sign in pop up option since the app was still waiting to link to an account.
17. Now the pop up says my plan supports 3 devices, which is why I thought I had made sure I only had my two Linux systems connected before I even started this install. This window only gives me the option to upgrade or sign out of some devices.
18. So I hit sign out of some devices, even though that didn’t really make sense to me.
19. Now the pop up shows this device in the list twice. One of which shows active and the other saying active in the last hour (my first sign in attempt?). So Dropbox is forcing me to try to enter the same third device twice. Looks like some kind of catch 22 making installation hopeless.
20. So I select the last active copy, which really was never actually linked as far as I could tell and hit the sign out and subsequent confirm sign out.
21. Pop up changed to a “You’re all set to install Dropbox on your Computer” with a continue with installation button. I thought I had already done this on the first go round.
22. Hit button, and pop up changes to Welcome Back pop up with next button. Hidden icon still shows Waiting to be linked status.
23. Hit next again and pop up changes to upgrade or keep basic option again.
24. Hit keep basic again and pop up changes to open Dropbox and advanced settings options again. I hit open Dropbox. This time the hidden icon status changes to starting….. and a pop up saying there’s already a Dropbox folder, which I imagine was created on the first trip down this path.
25. So this time I tried something new and picked a new location and it now seemed to actually start syncing.
26. So it worked, but not the way it used to be, so I went to preferences, and changed Sync from online only to available offline.
27. Deleted the empty Dropbox folder created in the first go round and then changed the Dropbox location from the new location back to the old location, which seemed to work
28. Almost there…., now I need to get my files that are still online-only back onto my hard drive. There wasn’t an obvious way to do this.
29. So I went into my moved Dropbox folder on explorer and selected everything and then from right click options selected make available offline. Wow, this was so much harder than it ever was before on windows. My use case is much simpler than enterprise and other users I suppose. I don’t really need to save disk space, I primarily have used Dropbox to maintain common files on my several personal compute devices. Seems that the disk saving defaults are a newer feature. Hopefully this is the way things used to be now. I can’t tell you how many times I logged in to my Dropbox account on this computer the last 2 days.🤣😂🤣