I get an error message that Windows System Restore failed?

[Richard P.44]

Hi

When I run Windows System Restore it fails with this error message

System Restore failed to replace the file (D:\Users\*******\Dropbox\.dropbox.cache\qebcobkqbgbzfynfuwbof\placeholder.bat) with its original copy from the restore point. An unspecified error occurred during restore. (0x80070780)

I have completed system recovery from an image without problem but on several occasions I have come up against this error when trying to correct a problem using system restore which would be easier to use if I could. I still have the problem if I run the system restore in safe mode with the same failour message

Any suggestions on allowing the restore to work

Richard

[Mrtatemyballs]

This is complete bull**bleep**. Just bricked my machine over this. I am a musician and now I must reset and reconfigure my ENTIRE setup. 2 days of work.

I will be going to Google drive. Forget this nonsense. Dropbox has had how long to fix This??

[john91106]

I am experiencing this exact issue. Tried to restore and none of the Windows 10 restore points will work.

Seems I'll have to wipe Windows 10 and start all over, after spending a week setting up this new PC.

Surprising that this issue was identified in 2018 and is still unresolved!

[Richard P.44]

Hi

Dropbox havent been able to get this sorted - if you are setting up your win 10 again I would suggest creating a seperate partition and put the dropbox folder in that - this will then allow you to restore successfully

Richard

[Richard P.44]

I was previously able to make a restore using the suggestion I made of putting Dropbox into a seperate partition

However today I tried and the restore failed - with a virus program being blamed. I ran it in safe mode which normally avoids that problem

Begining to think this is more of a MS problem - I notice that in Win10 the links to system restore are well hidden.

So back to making system images which seems to be the only safe way

Sorry for the bad advice!

Richard

[ploxkaka]

Optional rant, skip to next paragraph

I also encountered this issue. To me this appears to be a issue of both Dropbox and Windows, not solely Dropbox, but I'm still very dissapointed to see how Dropbox has handled this issue thus far. This big of a truly critical issue should of have been prioritized to the top & have been fixed within a week. It's disgusting to see how long it has been without a fix, considering there's people losing important data & lots of time due to this. The Dropbox developers should easily be able to test this issue on a VM, and make changes so the cache files doesn't interfer with System Restore. I hope Dropbox improves and make sure that this issue gets the attention & priority that it deserves. Similarly, Windows should also improve their System Restore GUI tool to allow for folder/file exceptions, at very least for the folders/files that fails to restore.

Anyways, my OS wouldn't even boot all the way to the login screen, not even in safe mode, due to accidental registry edits that ****ed my system. This made me a bit more limited in regards of restore options, I could only use Advanced Startup Options. Luckily I had my Dropbox files saved on a seperate "storage" drive which I didn't need to restore, but Windows System Restore tool would not allow me to select which drives to restore, all drives were included in the restore attempt. Advanced Startup Options includes a CMD option, I ran that and used diskpart in order to make my dropbox storage drive "offline". Once the drive was offline, I used the System Restore tool again, which now gave me the option to select which drives I wanted to restore. I selected my online disks, all but my storage (dropbox) drive, and the restore attempt was finally successful. My system is once again working correctly. Dealing with this problem took the majority of my day though, it really should be fixed.

I've now edited my restore points to not include my storage (dropbox) drive, so I don't encounter this issue again. I want restore points for my storage drive though, so hopefully this issue is fixed soon so I can enable it again.

[JacobRusso]

Dear Dropbox,

I have been a Dropbox user since the first release. My business partner, my family and I rely on Dropbox for ALL of our personal and business files. And I HAVE convinced hundreds of family, friends and clients to switch from half a dozen other services to Dropbox. I am very surprised that you have not placed more effort into correcting this issue. It is VERY SERIOUS and demands your complete attention.

Sincerely,
Jacob Russo
Imaging101, Inc

[Sam Mangham]

Still a problem for me. This is, well, amazingly bad. During installation it should be made very, very clear that you need to exclude the cache files from system restore. There is really 100% no reason for the Dropbox install to not put that up in big, red letters.

I've been evangelical about Dropbox to others but until this is fixed I genuinely can't recommend it to anyone, and am wavering about using it *myself*.

[SwanCobb]

Just want to give my thumbs down. Can't do a system restore because of the exact same error message. Microsoft OneDrive has reasonable basic features to match Dropbox, so there's no point in using Dropbox if they can't fix this or work with Microsoft to fix this. Its been at least a year since this issue has been reported and no action taken by Dropbox to remedy this.

[SwanCobb]

If anyone is interested, perhaps you can do a test?

Do a restore point but exclude c:\dropbox\.dropbox.cache ?

This says you might be able to exclude certain folders?

https://tweaks.com/windows/37472/exclude-specific-folders-from-system-restore-backup/

[Finlander]

It won't work. I tried that earlier and still the same result. My solution since I unfortunately didn't have a choice to choose another cloud storage provider, was to get a second SSD for my laptop (which, fortunately, had a second SSD slot), and move the Dropbox folder there. Now the system is restorable. 

I'm really surprised this problem has not been addressed one way or another yet.. it's a major bug!