Re: Dropbox freezes and crashes when I navigate in my Dropbox folder within File explorer.

Thanks for reporting this here, @dhannah! Let’s have a look. 

First off, I’d like to check how many files are syncing locally within your Dropbox folder. From your post, I get that your personal and Business Dropbox accounts are paired. Are you having this issue with both Dropbox folders or just with one?

Besides that, what’s the current syncing status of the Dropbox app? 

Are you noticing the same behavior if you quit the app, as well?

Keep me posted for any updates.

1. Q. How many files am I syncing? A. Many files (~ 1.6 TB); however, these files are mostly "Online-Only". Only a few folders are actually on my drive based on when I use them.

2. Q. Are you having problems with both folders? A. Yes, I'm having issues with both my Business files and my Personal files on Dropbox. The same lagging issue is happening with both. Both accounts are linked to my account and synced to my computer. My personal Dropbox files are all on my computer but my Business files are "Online-Only".

3. Q. What’s the current syncing status of the Dropbox app? A. "Up to date"

4. Q. Are you noticing the same behavior if you quit the app, as well? A. Yes, I tried quitting Dropbox and I'm experiencing the same issues.

Thanks for your help!

Thanks for the extra info, dhannah! 

1. I’d like you to right click on both your Dropbox folders, go to Properties, and send me a screenshot of the next window you’ll see on your screen. 
2. If the Dropbox app isn’t running, but the same issue persists, then there may be something else going on. Can you please try to open a few other folders on your device (irrelevant to Dropbox), which also contain a lot of files, and let me know if they load right away?

1. See screenshots below:

2. The Dropbox folders are the only ones that are slow. If I click on folders under my non-Dropbox folders, there is no lag or issues.

Thanks

Thanks for these screenshots! Do you happen to have any antivirus/firewall/VPN activated on your computer? 

If yes, I’d like you to disable it for a little bit, and test this again. Is the Dropbox folder opening normally now?

I do have an antivirus program (Symantec Endpoint Protection); however, when I disable it as you suggested, there is no difference in how quickly I can navigate through the Dropbox folders.

Furthermore, these issues started happening about 2 months ago (that I noticed) and I haven't changed anything security wise at that time.

Hmm, I see. Are you still having trouble with the Windows update shown in your first screenshot?

What if you uninstall the Dropbox app, while your antivirus is still off, restart your computer, and then install the Dropbox app again?

Thanks Nancy.

Before I try that, I'd like to mention that when I am trying to save a file (either through Microsoft word or my pdf editors or any other application) my navigation through Dropbox is seamless and for some reason I'm not having those same Dropbox issues. It's only when I'm navigating through Windows Explorer.

Does that give you any additional ideas? If not, I can try what you suggested above.

Thanks

Thanks for letting me know about that! It’s not necessary that everything related to Dropbox will be lagging, in this case. If you try the steps I sent you above though, and the issue still persists, then I’m happy to investigate this further and isolate the issue more.

I have the exact same problem. Navigating my local Dropbox folders on Windows 10 is painfully slow (using arrow keys to scroll through files, etc). It is as though I'm navigating an online cloud interface, not a local directory. This started just a couple of weeks ago and has really degraded the usability of Dropbox.

Hi there William F.5 - sorry to hear about this.

Can you please clarify you're device's exact OS version and the version and status of the Dropbox desktop app as shown in your system tray?

Did you reboot your computer since you first noticed this? 

I tried what you suggested. It seemed to be running smoothly after I uninstalled Dropbox, turned off antivirus, restarted computer and installed Dropbox again. But when I turned my antivirus back on after a day or two, I started having the problems again. Not sure if it was related.

Is there any way to have it working smoothly and not need to turn my antivirus off? I will need some form of antivirus on my computer. 

In this case, I’d like you to take one extra step and whitelist Dropbox on your antivirus (since the issue seems to be related to this). Let me know if that helps at all.

I opened a ticket with my antivirus provider (Symantec) and went through a few system checks. When I turn off my antivirus using the run command, I'm still experiencing issues. We also went through all the logs in Symantec and nothing was coming up on any of the logs for trying to access Dropbox. The technician was confidence that Symantec was not causing Dropbox to slow down.

Just as a refresher, when I uninstalled Dropbox and reinstalled it, Dropbox was working smoothly for about 1 or 2 days; however, the Dropbox I'm using is for work and we have over 1.5 TB of storage on Dropbox. When I set it up, I chose to have all new files as "Online-Only" to not take up too much space on my hard drive. Over about a week, Dropbox was downloading files. Sometimes the space on my laptop was filled (not sure why because I had selected Online-Only), but eventually, after about a week, everything was Synced and up to date on the Dropbox application. Like I mentioned before, I started to have issues with the folder again after about 1 or 2 days of syncing Dropbox. So, something happened after 1 or 2 days that caused my computer to slow down and based on my conversation with the Symantec support technician, it's not related to my antivirus.

Do you have any additional suggestions that I could try?

Hey dhannah - sorry to hear you're still  having issues with this.

Could you try creating a brand new OS profile on your computer and try to install and run the desktop app  there?

Do you notice the same behavior there by any chance? 

By "creating a brand new OS profile on your computer", do you mean creating another User in Windows 10?

And by "try to install and run the desktop app  there?" do you mean try to sync using the same Dropbox profile that I'm troubleshooting with now? If that's what you  mean, I don't have enough space on my drive and even if I did, it would take a few days to a week to sync everything onto the new user.

I would have to unsync everything from my current Dropbox, create a new user, then sync everything to the new user. And then I would have to try using it for a few days to see if the issue has resolved.

That would be pretty disruptive to my workflow over the next week. Is there anything else I could try? I'm just not sure what that would determine...

This would show us if there's some sort of mis-configuration, setting, policy or permission restriction or even some 3rd party app or process that's causing issues on your original OS profile dhannah 

In any case, the link I provided before leads to the most recent, stable version of the desktop app so I'd like you to check if you're already updated to that too.

Keep me posted with any updates!

Same here. A few weeks ago we where asked by dropbox to completely reinstall. Before my dropbox always slowed my Windows 10 Explorer, like when I try to access a folder or save a file it took Minutes before I could save the file because the "Save as" Window was "hanging/lagging out". Same with renaming folders. After the re-install Dropbox worked fine for a few weeks until last Friday. Now again, everything is slow and you often can't work with it efficiently. We also work as a team on Terabytes of shared files.

Robert 098, can you send me any ticket numbers you may have from your support convo? I can take a look, and guide you from there.

Same Problem here

Sorry to hear this, e3ecodesign. 

Unless you’re on a free Basic plan with more than 3 devices linked, have you tried reinstalling the Dropbox app?

Can you please also take a look at the rest of the suggestions here in this thread and let me know what you’ve tried so far, so that I can help troubleshoot further?

Has any progress been made on this issue?

I've had the same problem in Windows 10 for many months, and mostly just sucked it up and lived with it--but it's been pretty miserable. I can confirm the behavior described by previous posters: Explorer is very slow to select and navigate within the Dropbox directory but not elsewhere. Just today I set up a fresh install of Dropbox on a new hard drive with a brand new Windows 10 installation, and the problem recurred--again only within the Dropbox directory and all subdirectories.

I have about 96K files in my Dropbox totaling around 500 GB. I don't use any other cloud storage software that could interfere (no iCloud), and do not have any antivirus software installed (other than Microsoft's default Defender software). I can also confirm that when using a "light" file explorer like Explorer++ I have no issues.

Any idea what's going on here and what can be done about it? The only app integration I have is Overleaf, but that comprises a small share of total files. It seems like it's some interaction with Windows Explorer itself.

Hey grossdpg, thanks for posting here! 

Would you mind clarifying when you started noticing a difference on your end while using our app? 

Also, which version of the Dropbox app, do you use on your end? You should be able to locate that, but hovering your mouse over the little Dropbox icon, on your task bar, next to your WiFi. 

One more thing: if you quit our app and then check the behavior of your Dropbox folder in the File Explorer, do you notice the same thing? 

Let me know more, and we'll take it from there!

Thanks Megan. It's definitely been many months. I think this started sometime in 2023, possibly as far back as a year ago. There's some chance it could be even longer--I've just lost track.

To your question: when I quit the Dropbox app, and also terminate Dropbox Service and any other Dropbox-affiliated processes I can see running, the behavior persists (still isolated to just be within the Dropbox directory)

I'm currently running version 201.4.5552 on this PC (that's off a fresh install; my previous install/hard drive was auto updating). One detail I just remembered: curiously it only seems to affect this machine (a 2019 Dell laptop PC, 2 TB SSD, 32 GB RAM). I have two other computers (both desktop PCs running Windows 10) where I haven't had this issue. On one of those machines I have Dropbox installed on the same drive as the OS, and on the other machine it's on a secondary drive that only has my Dropbox directory on it. All evidence that rules against any of those variables.

The strangest thing, then, is that it recurred on a single machine, across two different hard drives, OS installs, and Dropbox installs, but the same account doesn't seem to create problems on two other computers, which are also running Windows 10 Pro. Makes me think this will be a tough nut to crack except others have reported similar things.

Hey grossdpg, thanks for all the details, much appreciated! 

What makes me a bit skeptical here is the fact that the same behavior is present when you quit the app.

If our app had something to do with it then the moment you quit it, the File Explorer would resume, wouldn't be as slow and work as expected. 

However, this doesn't seem to be the case here. Have you made sure that this doesn't have anything to do with the device's RAM or a Windows issue? 

Also, as the next step, you can try out these steps on your desktop app, and let me know if they help.