Outage Oct 30 2022?

[lynmac]

Seem to be getting an error message repeatedly telling me dropbox has to restart.  Anyone else?

[Walter]

Hey @lynmac, sorry to hear about this.

Can you please clarify your device's OS and the app's version as shown in your menu bar?

Also, did you reboot your computer since you first noticed this to see if it helps improve matters?

Keep us posted!

[lynmac]

@Walter Thanks for the message.  Sent a note off to Dropbox support yesterday once I figured out how to do that 😉

Running macOS Big Sur v11.7 and Dropbox v159.4.5870 under a Dropbox Plus subscription.  

And yes, did a reboot yesterday and am about to do another one now as the problem is persisting.

Happy Monday!

[Walter]

In that case, you can also try our latest stable version of the app.

You can download and install it from this page directly. 

[lynmac]

@Walter, an update .. Dropbox re-install (same version) and restart completed and no change - error message is still present.

[lynmac]

@Walter , Thanks so much for the link!  Dropbox build 160.4.4696 installed and another hard reboot done.  Sadly, no change, the dropbox error pop-up persists. 

[Megan]

Hi @lynmac, could it be any antivirus, or firewall that would be preventing Dropbox from launching properly? 

Could you try to disable them, and then try again?

[lynmac]

Update #2 - After Help from DB Support

This is becoming intriguing and I'm learning so much thanks to @Walter and Dropbox Support.  

DB Support suggested that some "symlinks" were the root cause.  In fairly technical language, something along the lines of "Symbolic links, Junction Points, or "symlinks", occur when folders are added to Dropbox that reference directories outside of the Dropbox folder or inside of the Dropbox folder but in a different folder. Because these symlinks may reference locations where Dropbox may have limited accessibility, they can cause various issues."  

As suggested by DBS I ran a terminal search for the symlinks, deleted the 2 files that were identified, emptied the trash, hard reboot of my Mac, started Dropbox and presto.... same error.  The irony is that the 2 files that were deleted had been in DB since November 2021, with no issue until yesterday 🤔

If it weren't for the fact I use DB so extensively, I would be entertained. 😎

Fingers and eyes crossed that there's more that can be tried to debug Dropbox!

[lynmac]

Hi @Megan thanks for the tips.  I'm at least logged into Dropbox but sync history is showing it as stuck on "starting".  I suspect I'll get the error message shortly - and yup, there it is.    

Oddly enough there's been no major change to my system configuration since I changed my OS back in August 2022.  If it helps, this all started when I was cleaning things up and moving files from my computer into DB.  Unfortunately, I just compared one of the folders I was uploading to in Dropbox to what's showing in my finder on my desktop there's a major gap -- documents moved on the weekend are online but not the historical documents.  

Now I'm starting to really feel uneasy. 

[Megan]

Hey @lynmac, you mentioned you've contacted our Support team, right?

Could you send me your ticket number, so that I can locate it on our system, and see the progress you've made with our agent?