syncing 10,000+ files and won't update current changes

[aiki]

Greetings everyone - hope you are all having a great week!

Hoping to find some help for the issue below, thank you...

- this has happened before, and I got a boiler-plate email response from support that was of no help, and my email follow up to them never received a response, so I just had to wait it out, and things (eventually) resolved.

This error has just now happened again - mac is syncing 10,000+ files and thus, files currently added/changed there have not replciated to dropbox on PC laptop- so it's not an idexing issue solely - it is and indexing (and not syncing till finsished indexing) issue?

No OS updates - nothing changed on my side that I am aware.

Using DB mac 89.4.278

Any thoughts, please? I need to get some work done...

[Lusil]

Hey @aiki, thanks for checking in with us on the Dropbox Community - welcome aboard!

I'd be more than happy to help look into this, I'll just need a bit more info, such as:

• Have you tried temporarily disabling/closing any third party security software or antivirus (as they could be hindering the desktop app from syncing)?
• Could you check if your firewall is configured to work with Dropbox? 
• Could you also send me a screenshot (without any personal info) of what you see when you click on the Dropbox icon next to your computer's clock?

Let me know what you find!

[aiki]

Thank you so much for responding - I very much appreciate it!

1- I disabled Avast - (but it worked with avast previously).

2- No changes made to firewall (unless you have changed somehtng on your side which necessiates some change on mine...)

3- paused syncing after disabling avast, and restarted syncing - now it has jumped to syncing more files than before I paused it.

any thoughts you have willbe very much appreciated! thx

[Lusil]

Thanks for the additional info, @aiki. 

Since you've tried some troubleshooting - awesome work by the way! - I'd recommend giving it some time to see if the numbers drop.

If you're still having trouble with this after a while though, don't hesitate to give me a nudge and I'd be more than happy to send you a ticket to have a more in-depth look. 

Let me know how it goes!

[aiki]

...and this is the way it is with dropbox, I guess...

(and please underdstand that I am not picking on you directly: after all, you were kind enough to at least acknowldge my inquiry.)

I really appreciate your offer to look into this some more if it continues to leave me dead in the water.  

But as of now, I AM dead in the water, (and I have been dead in the water before with your service, with this same exact issue) and got no support then either.

The pattern (in my extremely limited experience, since your service generally works just fine), is that I ask for help, am told to try what I've already tried, and when I follow up, the solution offered is to see what happens, and then I never hear anything again when I try to get additinal assistrance on actually resolving the issue. Last time out, it eventually rectified itself - I do not remember how long that took...

According to your knowledge base, this is a not infrequent issue, but I can find no articles that actually address a solution to pursue. 

Every time the computer is restarted it jumps back up to 10,000+ files to sync, and starts to decrement but (so far) never finishes. Perhaps I just have to wait it out? 

My real fear is that I started to work on old (or different) copies of files becuase I didn't yet realize nothing had synced, and will now have file conflicts.

Any help you can render will be very much appreciated - I just need to get some work done.

Thank you again, very much -

[Lusil · Accepted solution]

Thanks for getting back to me and sorry to hear about the frustration this has caused, @aiki. 

Since you mention that this happens upon every reboot, could you try the following steps in the exact order listed, and see if they do the trick?

1. Click on the Dropbox icon in your system tray.
2. Go to the gear in the Notifications panel.
3. Select Preferences...
4. Navigate to the Account tab.
5. Click anywhere in the window under the tab.
6. Hold down the 'Space' key (Windows) or the 'Option/Alt' key (Mac).
7. Click on the Fix Hardlinks button (you may be asked for your computer's login credentials).
8. Please wait a bit to see if Dropbox resumes syncing.

If the above steps don’t resolve your issue, please repeat steps 1-5, but at step 6, click on the Fix Permissions button, instead. 

Let me know of any updates!

[aiki]

Hello Lusil -

Thx for following up!  This probelem is on the mac thoigh, please, as above.

The windows side appears to be syncing what it (thinks) is current - problem is, that the mac side has (still) not finished syncing the 10,000+ files on it's side - so the "synced," windows side dropbox is not up to date

thoughts, please?

[Lusil]

Thanks for getting back to me, @aiki.

I edited the instructions I mention above to include those for Mac - apologies for not including them to begin with. 

Could you try following them and see if that does the trick? 

Keep me posted!

[aiki]

Lusil -- Kudos to you for sticking with this!

Not sure which of the fixes, permission or hardlinks, fixed the issue, but it does now seem fixed with syncing happening on all endpoints, and across reboots.

Can't thank you enough for continuing to dig to find a solution! Lost a day of work, and not sure about file conflicts, but all is functionaling now, and I can get on with seeing what is what.

Now, just a comment - since you have (many) community posts describing the same/similar issue with no solutions that listed the fixes you just graciously supplied, (that do seem to work, thank you), perhaps there is a way to add this information that you sourced (your excellent solution) to FAQ?

Thank you again for hanging tight on a tough issue - and for fidning a solution that gets me back in business.

Hope you have a really nice weekend!

[Lusil]

Glad to hear that we were able to get to the bottom of this, @aiki!

If anything else pops up in the future, you know where to find us. In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderful weekend too!