Installation fails for people from Serbia due to certificates - Solution (Windows)

[bgr]

I've noticed that Dropbox has been failing to upgrade from v112 to v113 last week. I've decided to uninstall it and try installing it manually, but the installer would stop with "Error 2" (v114 is also affected). Reading up on it I saw that that error means the issue is outside of Dropbox's control. I've dug up the installation log file and saw that it ends with

File "ssl.pyc", line 482, in _load_windows_store_certs
ssl.SSLError: nested asn1 error (_ssl.c:4034)

which for me was (un)fortunately a known issue. I am from Serbia and this error is common for Python when there are government certificates (for reading government ID or driver license smart cards) installed on Windows. In order to have these on the computer you have to install them manually from the government's website, but many people / offices will have them so I suspect many people will be having problems with Dropbox until this is resolved.

I've solved it by removing the certificates (search for "Internet options" in Start menu, go to Content > Certificates, look for everything that looks like it has to do with Serbia - I deleted one from "Personal" tab and one with name starting with MUPCA from "Intermediate" tab). Of course, do this at your own risk if you know what you're doing, I deleted them since I don't really need them. After deleting these Dropbox installed without problems.

Feel free to forward this to Dropbox engineers because I know a bug like this can be a hell to debug and they'll be grateful to be aware of this. Something was changed after v112 since Dropbox worked fine on my machine for months/years. This is a known issue (with a known workaround for local Python installations) https://bugs.python.org/issue35665.

[Jay]

Hi @bgr, thanks for messaging today!

I appreciate the input on the forum.

This should help any other user from that region is they have similar issues installing the Dropbox desktop application.

Enjoy your week!

[nmiTools]

I confirm this issue and I am also from Serbia.

When I saw this SSL error in logs I also knew. I had a bad experience with the very same error using Jupyter Notebook several weeks ago. I cannot uninstall or reinstall dropbox at all. and it stopped working.

[markosmiljanic]

Thank you for this info. You saved my day!!!

For people from Serbia, certificates that caused this problem on my PC are the ones coming with "Čelik" - the application used to read personal ID cards. Just remove "MUP" certificates. 

[woopata · Accepted solution]

Thank you @bgr, found the installation logs and saw the "ssl.SSLError: nested asn1 error (_ssl.c:4034)" but didn't know what to do with it. Fortunately, I was able to find your answer and it really helped. In my case, it wasn't the certificate you mentioned, but it was "24x7.co.yu Root CA". Thanks once again!

[dpeca]

Also from Serbia.

Removing certificates from 'Personal' tab didn't help 😞

I had certificates from Banca Intesa Belgrade (required for OfficeBanking desktop app), removed them, but still unable to start, uninstall or install Dropbox.

I'm using dropbox since 2010 😞

I'm using Windows 10.0.19042

Any idea how to solve this?

[dpeca]

Update:

As @woopata suggested, removing "24x7.co.yu Root CA" solved the problem.

Thanks man!

[Djolla_community]

I have this problem both on my laptop (win7) and my PC (win10). Both of them have MUP government certificates, I need those for dealing with tax and signing documents. Having this problem since last month, and it gave a lot of headache so BIG thanks to @bgr for finding this problem. My current Dropbox version is 108.4.453 and all attempts to update it have failed. So about 100 times a day my firewall gives me a message that Dropbox is trying to update and that is very annoying when you are trying to work. So, my Dropbox v108 is still working, I managed even to reinstall it to that version using offline installer. But nothing more. So about deleting those certificates...
Can someone confirm that deleting MUP certificates will make application like ePorezi (or logging in with id card on government websites) stop working properly? Or maybe not, because they belong with that Čelik app...

And a plea for Dropbox developers... Can we expect to have a workaround for this in some future updates? Even if those certificates are bad, isn't it better that Dropbox installation can just skip and ignore an invalid certificate unless it is required for the application to work. And I don't see what Dropbox have to do with those certificates in the first place?

Thanks!

[Terek]

I can confirm that for Serbian users deleting of All MUPCA certificates will solve the problem.

If you can't delete them all from "Internet Options", try

1. Click on Start.

2. Type CERTMGR.MSC in start search box and press Enter.

This will open the Certificate Manager and from there you can delete any certificate you need to.
That way you will be able to remove all Serbian certificates, and you will install Dropbox without any problems.

[Lusil]

Hey peeps, thanks for all the reports. 

If you are still having trouble with this, could you submit a ticket to our team from this link, so that they can look into this with you?

If you have any trouble creating a ticket, just give us another nudge and we'll be more than happy to send you one. 

Thanks again, everyone!