Truly stop Dropbox client from starting automatically on Windows 10.

[Garret W.]

This is happening to me on Windows 10 Pro 64-bit. When I first installed Dropbox 3.14.7 I thought it it was well-behaved, because it offered an option to disabled "Start Dropbox on system startup". But that doesn't work.

I have certain drives that aren't mounted when the system starts. I have moved the Dropbox configuration files (via an NTFS symbolic link) to that drive, but I make sure that I mount the drive before starting the Dropbox desktop application. I have disabled "Start Dropbox on system startup".

Yet still when I boot Windows 10, Dropbox throws up a dialog informing me that it has failed to start. *I had told it not to start automatically! Of course it will have a problem---I haven't mounted its settings drive yet. *But I told it not to start!*

If Dropbox has a "Start Dropbox on system startup" option, it should honor that options. Don't control my system while pretending to give me options to disable the software. Please tell me how to *really* stop Dropbox from starting automatically, even the secret whatever-it-does-to muck-around-with-my-system, or I am removing the software from my computer. Thanks.

[Rick_M]

<gear> "Preferences" General tab "uncheck start-on-startup"

[Garret W.]

The whole point of this post is that I have already disabled the "Start Dropbox on system startup", yet Dropbox still tries to do things when the system starts.

Did you only read the title of my post and ignore everything else I wrote?

[Rick_M]

I assumed you had already removed any calls from your win 10 "startup" folder.

[Sylvain B.3]

I'm not sure about W10 but there are 2 places where Dropbox is called in W7:

1- MSCONFIG (use TaskManager's Startup TAB in W10) - just disable the Dropbox line.

2- Task Scheduler : Disable the 2 DropboxUpdate tasks.

This should do it.

Regards,

[thaold]

Cannot after updating new release dropbox, it don't care previous settings from previous dropbox version, it's still startup automatic. Please use winpatrol and autoruns to delete, i'm sure no problem with dropbox. Today every apps need run with system startup but almost all of them do nothing because modern programing style like that! You will be paid a lot of money to change HDD, Dropbox is one of apps make damaged HDD.

[jpolich]

Same problem. Windows 10. Dropbox never requested or installed, not welcome, do not want it to intercept pdf downloads. But cannot stop it. Changed all startup and asssociate settinga to Adobe but DropBox will not go away. It is malware that cannot be removed and DropBox support keeps posting "fixes" that are fake news..

[Al1989j]

If that happens while you connect your phone/camera/iPad/etc to your PC, go to settings and disable the AutoPlay. Done!

[Zed]

Hey @Garret W. 

If you go to the Dropbox app preferences by clicking on the  icon and uncheck "Start Dropbox on system startup" that should prevent the Dropbox services loading upon your system boot.

@jpolich we'd like to help on this, can you share more information with us on what exactly happens? Have you raised a ticket number with our support team? 

Thanks!

[Garret W.]

Ignore my earlier reply. I thought you were replying to another thread:

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox/Shell-Overlay-Icons/idi-p/111622/page/5#comments

The startup issue is moot --- I've completely removed Dropbox from my system because of it's stupid icon overlay hijacking approach.