Missing Context Menu and Icon Overlay

[kheldar]

Hello,

Wondered if anyone else had this issue. When I searched, it seems to be old. I've installed Dropbox on two separate machines (Windows 10, 20H2) and it works great with the exception of the Context Menu and Icon Overlays are missing. I do get the tray icon.

I've performed the following with no luck:

• Re-ran the installer without uninstalling
• uninstalled, rebooted, reinstalled
• rebooted a bunch of times
• un-registered the device from the account
• moved the dropbox folder
• Installed other tools that have overlays (sync.com) and those work fine
• Installed on a clean VM and that works

It does not look like it's writing to the registry correctly when I compare the VM to either production device. All have different AV, all are patched within the last month. Since darn near everything else installs/works fine, it appears to be isolated with the dropbox installer.

Any thoughts?

[Jay]

Hi @kheldar, thanks for posting on the Community!

It sounds like there an issue with your machine in particular which is preventing the Dropbox desktop application from installing the necessary context menu components on the device.

Regarding the sync icon overlays, if you have multiple apps that use them, then you might have reached the 15 icon limit on Windows, which is why you won't see them unless those apps are disabled or exited.

If you need any further assistance, please let me know!

[kheldar]

I've checked the registry and have not reached the 15 icon limit, I have 3 entries there so that is fine. In addition I installed another product that uses overlays (and since removed it) and it works fine.

I would agree that the machine had an issue if it wasn't multiple devices with different loads with the exception of Windows 10 20H2.

I performed more testing and found out the following:

I ran regsvr32 and registered the DLL that dropbox uses for the context menu and it works. However once I restart the dropbox app, they disappear. So something in the app is removing the menus.

I also installed an older version of the dropbox app and it gave me the context menus! Then it updated to the latest and removed them. 

Based on the above testing, it seems like there is an issue with the latest app/installer.

[Jay]

If you hover over the Dropbox icon, what version of the app are you running?

[kheldar]

122.4.4867

With all the testing I didn't document what the old version I tested successfully was but I believe it was 118.4.460.

[kheldar · Accepted solution]

Update!

So it looks like I got it to work!

1. Performed an Advananced Reinstall BUT in step 5 (for Windows) I used the Dropbox 119.4.1772 Offline Installer.exe instead of the latest version.

2. Verified working and rebooted.

3. Waited for it to auto-update to 122.4.4867, restarted explorer.exe and overlay and context menu were there and working.

4. Rebooted one more time, just because and all is still well.

If someone is having similar issues, hopefully this will help!

[Jay]

Glad to hear it's working now, @kheldar. If you need any further assistance in future, please let me know.

Enjoy your week!