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Kester's avatar
Kester
Collaborator | Level 8
10 years ago
Solved

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

Onthe last few startups of my Windows 7 desktop, the EventViewer has shown the following error  and subsequent information logs as the error is corrected by Windows:

 

Record Number: X 95916
Log Type: Application
Event Type: Error
Source: DbxSvc
Category: 3
Event ID: 320

Failed to connect to the driver: (-2147024894) The system cannot find the file specified.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Record Number: 95931
Log Type: Application
Event Type: Information
Source: ESENT
Category: 3
Event ID: 300

Windows (2500) Windows: The database engine is initiating recovery steps.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Record Number: 95932
Log Type: Application
Event Type: Information
Source: ESENT
Category: 3
Event ID: 301

Windows (2500) Windows: The database engine has begun replaying logfile C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\MSS.log.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Record Number: 95933
Log Type: Application
Event Type: Information
Source: ESENT
Category: 3
Event ID: 302

Windows (2500) Windows: The database engine has successfully completed recovery steps.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Record Number: i 95915
Log Type: Application
Event Type: Information
Source: DbxSvc
Category: 2
Event ID: 258

Pipe server thread started.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It seems as if the Dropbox service may be trying to start too soon as, after the initial error, Windows seems to be able to correct the problem and everything works correctly.  This is a very recent happening and I cannot relate the change to any system changes.  Is there anything I can do to stop the error - if I didn't regularly check the Event Viewer I would be none the wiser so perhaps I'm being too sensitive.

 

Thanks.

Error Messages
  • bn's avatar
    bn
    9 years ago

    Hi everyone!

     

    Sorry for the delay here -- I usually hang out on the client builds forum and missed this.

     

    This error is expected and harmless. We are optimistically checking for features currently in development and logging an error when we don't find them enabled. We shouldn't be logging it as an error, however, perhaps as an Informational-level event and I'll make sure we clean this up in a future release.

     

    If you're suspicious that this has been causing instability -- this hasn't really changed since last summer so it's probably not the droids you are looking for (combined with the fact that the error is indicative of things not happening, rather than things happening that are potentially destabilizing).

     

    -Ben

  • Ross_S's avatar
    Ross_S
    9 years ago
    Hi all,
     
    First: Many apologies for the delay in jumping in here, I wanted to make sure I had a concrete update for you all.
     
    So, for context: What is Dbxsvc? :
     
    I've added a section to the help center article: https://help.dropbox.com/desktop-web/smart-sync (I say section, it's more of a note at the bottom under the driver FAQ).
     
    The file dbxsvc.exe is a file that we use to install the Smart Sync driver. Should you not be a business user, or not have Smart Sync, then this file will never start operating. It is, however, created at install for all users so if you are not a Smart Sync this file will still appear there.
     
    I see we have a number of pretty interesting, creative suggestions on how to disable, coupled with queries if it's safe to disable it. I'm of course not going to endorse a process that disables part of our software, should a feature or functionality cause user pain then we would want to know. Fixability and timeframes can vary depending on the in-depth technical nature of the problem.
    Should you decide to disable it with one of the solutions here, it will prevent the smart sync feature from working in some cases. We need the service to update the driver, as well as to establish new driver<->client connections. This is the services current functionality. Additional functionality could be added over time. My main concern around anyone disabling it is that in the future you may need this process, Smart Sync won't work correctly, you can reach out to support but this custom change you've made will be hard for us to diagnose as the root cause of whatever issue you experience.
     
     
    Why is it failing to connect / what's going wrong?:
     
    It should be failing to connect. This is by design, the actual issue you’re facing is due to the frequency we're writing to the logs. To address any concerns around error with the application, these errors are in no way indicative of a software issue and do not point to any issues with backing up you data. Because it fails to connect, Windows treats this as a trigger to write to the log. Your data is safe, this process is just used to install a driver. As covered in the above section we expect it to do what you are seeing.
     
    With that in mind, we understand that some of you do wish to see this behaviour.
     
     
    Why aren't we fixing this?:
     
    We are, we take our user feedback very seriously and we have spent many hours working on this. As fixes have many dependencies, and are just one components of a version release, I'm always reluctant to jump onto a thread and give a firm release date for a fix as these are regularly subject to change.
    You may have noticed that we took the original connection attempt frequency down from every 1 second to every minute. This was an improvement we took onboard based on the feedback you've supplied here and also via other channels. Our new release, 31.3.15, has further improved this, the process will run 3 times daily. This should reduce the errors written to the logs and not clutter the report.
     
    The new beta version is the first to include a fix:
     

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  • ebonato's avatar
    ebonato
    New member | Level 2
    9 years ago

    I`ve just found a way to stop logging "informational" "Failed to connect to the driver: -2147023658". But you will need to see my entire quest to get the big picture...
    First, I'm a user of Windows Insider Enterprise, which already gave me others problems in the past (with another softwares, not DropBox until now)...
    On Windows Insider build 16215, I was facing some issues with keyboard, when using portuguese letters with accents (é ã á ...)... even with correct keyboard layout configurations... definily that wasn't a simple keyboard configuration issue....things goes more interesting when finding that using gmail with Chromre, I couldn't to use accented letters, but using gmail Edge I was able to use...
    On another PC at working, I could move foward to Windows Insider build 16226, and this keyboard issue was gone...
    Trying to move foward to 16226 on home laptop, I droped on this issue with Dropbox... for some reason, this issue with dropbox (error connecting to driver) seems to be impacting update process of build 16226,  holding me up with bogus build 16215. The dropbox service itself was working normally, without issues.

    Checking event viewer, I've found more then 200.000 entries about this "informational" error connecting to driver from dbxsvc. So I've to check this error on dropbox community.

    Reinstalled dropbox, restarting service, tried everything that you already tried on this thread.

    Reading previous replies on this thread, I was able to understand about different versions of dbx.sys (the driver wich dbxsvc service cannot connect). Using Process Hacker, I changed the FS driver entry to the dbx-dev.sys.

    Restarted FS Driver and dbxsvc and BANG... new true "informational" messages:

     

    The file is signed and the signature was verified: C:\Program Files (x86)\Dropbox\Client\Dropbox.exe

    Certificate match for file: C:\Program Files (x86)\Dropbox\Client\Dropbox.exe

    Accepting connection from client: C:\Program Files (x86)\Dropbox\Client\Dropbox.exe

    The file is signed and the signature was verified: C:\Program Files (x86)\Dropbox\Client\Dropbox.exe

    Certificate match for file: C:\Program Files (x86)\Dropbox\Client\Dropbox.exe

    Accepting connection from client: C:\Program Files (x86)\Dropbox\Client\Dropbox.exe

    Attempting to load driver, version: dev

    Loaded the driver.

    Connected to the driver

     

    After that, Windows update goes foward to build 16226 without issues.

    I cannot double check if this issue with windows update is really related with dropbox FS driver, but I've found interesting to share.

     

    Cheers,

     

     

  • ebonato's avatar
    ebonato
    New member | Level 2
    9 years ago
    Forgot to mention. My dropbox is at version 29.3.19, @ Windows 10 Insider Enterprise
  • mat-glock's avatar
    mat-glock
    Helpful | Level 5
    9 years ago

    I left DropBox many moons ago.  Too many errors and not a response from the company.  

     

    My data is much too important... went to OneDrive and not looked back.  

  • orion44's avatar
    orion44
    Helpful | Level 6
    9 years ago

    Me as well, but I went with Google Drive instead.

  • DarekWaWa's avatar
    DarekWaWa
    New member | Level 2
    9 years ago

    same here with Failed to connect to the driver: -2147024894, retrying in 1000 milliseconds on mine Windows 10 (1607).

    How to solve it?

     

  • Nocturnal's avatar
    Nocturnal
    Helpful | Level 5
    9 years ago

    Today version 30.3.14 probably fixed the problem

  • orion44's avatar
    orion44
    Helpful | Level 6
    9 years ago

    There is no probably, it either did or didn't.

  • Nocturnal's avatar
    Nocturnal
    Helpful | Level 5
    9 years ago

    You're right and i was mistaked. Problem is yet here (((

  • Kester's avatar
    Kester
    Collaborator | Level 8
    9 years ago

    This latest issue is so frustrating and has been going on far too long without any interjection from Dropbox personnel.  Orion44's image of the ostrich burying its head in the sand just about sums up the attitude of the company.

     

    I've disabled DbxSvc to bring back some normality to the Event Viewer - I want to be able to use it to monitor 'real' issues rather than watch a continuous flow of Dropbox errors designated as 'Information'.  The disabling does not appear to have stopped me using Dropbox so I will leave things as they now are until this issue is resolved. 

     

    Coincidentally, I've recently removed Microsoft's OneDrive from my system as it became rather unreliable - the final straw was when it went into continuous synchronisation mode and hogged so much of system resources the computer became unusable.  I'm not to keen on Google's ethics so I don't want to use Google Drive but with Dropbox becoming a bit of a pain, I will need to investigate alternatives.

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