Dropbox sync and file access issues

[Mike Guest]

Over the past two weeks I have been having increasing issues with Dropbox.

I have been a user for 7 or 8 years - but recently I am seeing

1. sync never finishes - the icon for syncing is constantly active - this is slowing down access to local files in the drop box folder

2. a number of files won't open. This started with .txt files (which I use to record quick links) but now appears to affect files of all types (but not all files of the same type).

From other threads I have tried disconnecting my account and reconnecting it - this has just meant that dropbox has decided to resync 110,000 files - despite the location being the same.

This is happening on my Win 10 desktop and my Win 10 laptop.

Currently to reliably open files I have to use the Dropbox web interface - and the sync impacts network speeds for other applications such as zoom.

Any help or advice on the cause and potential solutions would be much apreciated.

[Lusil]

Hi there @Mike Guest, let's see what we can do on this. 

Since you've already tried relinking your account - great work with the troubleshooting! - could you also give these steps a try? 

Let me know if this helps, thanks!

[AlessandroCola]

Same problems here. I tried with your step but nothing to do. My pc's won't sync from 3 days 😞

[Mike Guest]

Thank you for the suggestions Lusil.

On my PC - the reconnect account appears to have worked (did not need to try the hardlinks or permissions). There is a big BUT though. The selective sync was set to download copies of one key folder - when the sync completed - every file in dropbox was in "online only" mode. I have needed to select the local file option from the folder itself in order to use any files - another 3-4 hours so far of downloading files to the local dropbox location.

On my laptop, the file update has taken 24 hours to get to 29000 files tosync. I have to restart my laptop every few hours as it just gets stuck at a certain point and then makes not additional progress (as all the files are the same as my PC - I don't think there can be any issues such as corrupt files or long file names as my PC would have been stuck in the same manner). If I try to change the selective sync options to reduce download time (i don't want all of my folders stored locally - that's why I have dropbox) it crashes dropbox and it needs to be restarted. Hardlinks and permissions seems to have no effect. Currently, no files in my local dropbox can be opened .txt files for example just crash notepad.

I am still 30,000 files away from a complete sync - and I get the feeling that the files will be as on my PC and will all be cloud only by the time this process finishes. 

I've never had this sort of problem in all the time I have been a user - its very frustrating and disruptive.

[AlessandroCola]

I’m so tired. I have 6 pc...and neither works

[Lusil]

@AlessandroCola, thanks for joining us on this thread and sorry to hear that you're also having trouble syncing your files. 

Could you and @Mike Guest both have a look and see how many files you have in your Dropbox folder?

Also, hover over the Dropbox icon on your system tray and let me know the version of the app that you're running.