Dropbox Must be restarted continually

[David D]

I have to continually restart DropBox to get it to sync or allow "sharing".  I am using a Windows 10 64 bit machine.  I have noticed this on three computers and it is very annoying.  I have tried all troubleshooting steps and it is listed in my startup programs.  

[Daphne]

Hi there @David D, I hope you're having a good day so far!

Just to clarify, if you keep needing to restart the desktop app does it appear that the app is randomly crashing on your computer without warning?

When you restart the desktop app, you should see the Dropbox icon showing in your system tray. When you have syncing trouble or are not able to share, has this icon disappeared from there?

Please let me know which version of the desktop app you have installed too.

Keep me posted!

[David D]

Hey Daphne. Thanks for responding. I am using the latest version. Reinstalled it many times. I don't see any errors. It just stops running. The icon disappears randomly. Noticed this on all my machines.

[Daphne]

Thanks for getting back to me here @David D!

Do you happen to have any antivirus software running on your computer? If so, could you try temporarily disabling this and let me know if the app still crashes silently in the background?

Also, when the app is running on your computer, please hover over the Dropbox icon and let me know which version of the app you have installed.

Let me know!

[David D]

97.4.467 is the version I am running.  I am not running any anti-virus.  Thanks!

[Daphne]

Just to cover all our bases here @David D, can you let me know if you have any symlinks within your Dropbox folder? 

If you're not sure, please check out the steps on how to locate these in point 7 of this article here.

Also, please let me know around how many files you're syncing to your Dropbox folder.

[David D]

I have no idea how many files I am syncing, thousands I am guessing.  That command (dir /a:l /s) in the page you reference does not work.  And even if I did find simlinks I wouldn't know what to do with them.  This command does work dir AL /s and it just shows 0 files but it lists a directory deep inside dropbox.  Since we've started this chat, it has not crashed once.  I am hoping it won't.  If it does I just run Dropbox.exe and it restarts.  I wish I didn't have to do that.  

[Daphne]

I'm glad to hear that @David D!

If you had any symlinks within the Dropbox folder, then I would have just suggested to reverse the link by moving the actual file within Dropbox and then making a symlink to the file in the other location.

Please do let me know if you have any other issues with the app crashing, I'd be happy to help out further with this.

I hope you have a great start to your week!