Windows 7 Event Viewer Error "Failed to connect to the driver: (-2147024894)"

Hi Tom W.40,

I guess the cause of the problem is sloppy coding somewhere along the line but the problem is made more frustrating by the indifference shown by the developers who rarely post in this thread even though they must be very much aware of the feelings of users.  Users might be happier if Dropbox were more open and shared a bit more information about what is really going on - the lack of respect that Dropbox is showing for their users is probably worse than the technical problem itself.  They should remember that this is a Dropbox specific forum and its users would expect Dropbox to be more actively involved.

Why is this marked as "solved"?   I'm still getting this problem in the current version.

Good point. It's not solved so can it be flagged accordingly?

Hi NickG_UK,

This issue was marked 'Solved' because, when originally the problem was posted at the start of this thread, the issue appeared as an error in the Event Viewer (i.e. with a red marker against the record number in the first column).   The problem was downgraded to 'Information', so no longer showing the red error marker, and as the information log only appeared once when the system booted without any noticeable issues during the Windows session, the thread was marked 'Solved'.  However, relatively recently, the problem has intensified so that it is necessary to disable DbxSvc to stop the Event Viewer information logs (re: the inability to connect to the driver) occurring every second.

The word 'Solved' should be removed and perhaps replaced with 'Ongoing' but I, as the initiator of the thread, have not found a way to do this.

Hi bn,

Seems tha NO ONE sees my post about HOW TO solve connect Driver issue.

As a Senior Developer, I can state this is a common bug about merging code from dev channel to stable channel, as DbxSvc logs which successfully connected to FS Driver.

Are you referring to your earlier post about changing to the dbx-dev.sys driver? While that might be a viable workaround we need the standard package to be fixed so anyone who installs the app doesn't get the event logger flooded with thousands of messages.

That is a workaround and not a fix. The only fix is if installing a later version stops the problem from occuring so people's time is not wasted running into the issue and having to read this (long) thread and taking manual steps to work around the issue.

Hi Ebonato,

Your earlier post has been seen and is not being ignored.  I think that disabling DbxSvc is a reasonable temporary workaround for me so I do not need your rather more complicated approach but others may find your tempoary solution more appropriate for their individual needs so, of course, your suggestion was a useful inclusion in this thread.  However, whatever workaround we employ, it is incumbant on Dropbox to find a permanent solution as soon as possible.  This problem has been going on for many months now and soon will be approaching its anniversary (although there seem to be no plans for a celebration :wink:) - new potential users will be downloading Dropbox to try and immediately be confronted with the issue, surely not agood advertisement for Dropbox.  Those who have been using Dropbox for longer and who visit this forum, are likely to be aware of the possible workarounds and perhaps be a little more forgiving although clearly, from some of the posts in this thread, even some of the experienced users have had enough and moved on to one of the alternatives.

Hi,

following the hints given by ebonato (but using dbx-stable.sys instead of dbx-dev.sys), I translated them to the following workaround actions which can be done using Registry-Editor (Start | Run | regedit):

• Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\dbx
• Change the value "ImagePath" from "system32\DRIVERS\dbx.sys" to "system32\DRIVERS\dbx-stable.sys"
• Change the Value "Start" from "3" to "2" (this will cause the service to "autostart")

Alternatively copy the following text to a file called dbx.reg:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\dbx]
"Start"=dword:00000002
"ImagePath"=hex(2):73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,44,00,\
  52,00,49,00,56,00,45,00,52,00,53,00,5c,00,64,00,62,00,78,00,2d,00,73,00,74,\
  00,61,00,62,00,6c,00,65,00,2e,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,00,00

Double click file dbx.reg to import its contents to the registry.

Restart Windows.

After that I can see the following event log (informational) messages:

System:

Source: FilterManager, EventID 6: "Der Dateisystemfilter "dbx" (6.1, ‎2017‎-‎01‎-‎27T21:53:28.000000000Z) wurde erfolgreich geladen und im Filter-Manager registriert."  (in an English system this should look similar to "The filesystem filter "dbx" () was successfully loaded and registered to the filter manager")

Application:

Source: DbxSvc, EventID 336: "Service started (1.0.23.0)."

Source: DbxSvc, EventID 341: "Connected to the driver"

Source: DbxSvc, EventID 258: "Pipe server thread started."

That's it.

Currently I'm using Dropbox Version 29.4.20.

I assume that the above registry changes will be overridden with the next Dropbox Update, hence you would have to repeat the actions (e.g. using the reg file), if the next version will not fix the problem.

<EDIT>:

Yet another approach:

Open a command prompt with administrative rights and enter the following commands:

sc stop dbxsvc
sc stop dbx
sc config dbx start= auto binPath= system32\DRIVERS\dbx-stable.sys
sc start dbx
sc start dbxsvc

</EDIT>