DropBox Cannot Connect or Sync Despite Advanced Reinstall - Need Manual Sync Solution

[Cobalt Praetorian]

64-bit Win11 PC

Company-provided laptop with firewalls (presumably)

Internet connected

My Dropbox desktop app will not connect with the internet, no matter what I do, even though it used to.

I have installed the 64-bit version, currently showing as v187.4.5691. The Dropbox updater, on the other hand, runs in the background as a 32-bit task, but that's a question for another day.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled and restarted numerous times, including using the Advanced Reinstall instructions.

Whenever I start Dropbox, I get the message that I am not connected to the internet. I am, in fact, connected to the internet, because I can post this question. Yet when I click "Sign in" in the app, nothing happens. The taskbar icon stays grayed out, saying "Connecting..." and the app, when opened, says "Starting..." - but again, nothing ever happens.

I have added every Dropbox executable to the Windows firewall. And I mean every one - I did a full search of my PC.

I'm at a loss as to why this isn't connecting, and now I just need to manually sync my files at this point. I'm not sure the best way to do that.

I'm lookng for potential solutions that I haven't already tried for getting the sync to work, or for manually syncing my files. Thanks.

[Hannah]

Thanks for taking the time to post to our Community, @Cobalt Praetorian.

It does sound like there's some kind of security app/service that won't allow Dropbox to connect.

Apart from the firewall, do you perhaps have any other programs like an antivirus or VPN that could be blocking Dropbox and its domains?

Can you also try our offline installer to see if that helps?

Keep me posted.

[Cobalt Praetorian]

Hi Hannah,

Thanks for your reply. Since it's a work laptop, I do use a VPN when I need to connect to a secure server, but the Dropbox app isn't working under either a VPN or non-VPN condition. I have tried disabling the antivirus options I could (see again: work laptop), but that has had no effect either.

I was completely unable to install the app using the online installer, which points to my/your ongoing theory that this is being blocked somehow by my work. I used the offline installer after figuring out how to download the x64 version (it kept trying to automatically download the x86 version, as it did using the link you provided above).

Unfortunately, even after that install I was still unable to connect.

At this point, it appears I may be stuck with manually syncing the files through the web app, which is... suboptimal, to put it mildly.

[Hannah]

Hey @Cobalt Praetorian, thanks for the update on this.

Sorry to hear that the issue persists.

Perhaps if you're able to, check on this with your IT department to ensure nothing is being blocked by your network, etc.

If they find nothing is being blocked then don't hesitate to give us another ping here and we can continue looking into this.

[Cobalt Praetorian]

This morning, approximately 10 minutes after I booted my computer, I got a popup saying Dropbox was offline and to check my internet settings - the same one I get every time I start my computer.

I clicked okay and ignored it, focusing on other tasks.

About 10 minutes later, I got another popup - much larger, asking me to sign in on my browser (which popped up in the background). Apparently I was then auto-logged-in on the browser, which gave me a big blue button that said "Open Dropbox" - but the popup stayed in the foreground, asking me to go to my browser... the same one that had already logged me in.

Clicking "Go to browser" on the popup opened a new tab in my browser that indicated I was logged in and gave me the blue button to "Open Dropbox." Clicking that brought the unchanged popup back to the foreground.

At one point in this never-ending loop I attempted to "Create account" instead of "Go to browser," and entered my login information that way. I got back to the same "Open Dropbox" logged-in browser tab that went nowhere.

I closed the app and restarted it, doing other things to see if the popup would come back, but it has not, and I'm still left with the "currently offline" message with "Connecting..." showing in the taskbar over the greyed out Dropbox logo.

I don't know if this matters, but Task Manager currently shows two instances of "Dropbox Update (32-bit)" running at the same time, which is also odd.

As to your suggestion, you'd think HP's IT department would be responsive, but they can't seem to understand that I'm talking about Dropbox and not some HP-installed app. They are... unhelpful (if I'm being nice).

[Jay]

Hi @Cobalt Praetorian, as it's a company-managed device, there are usually a lot of restrictions on them. 

As you mentioned, there's a firewall, security software and potentially some more restrictions in the backend.

Were you able to install the Dropbox desktop application with admin privileges? I'm certain that your IT team would be able to shed some light on this matter.

[Cobalt Praetorian]

I was able to install the software with admin privileges.

I'll try them again, but I'm not optimistic.

Do you have a process for a manual sync?

[Jay]

There isn't anything like manual sync, since it should be automatically detecting new changes and syncing, when the app is working normally.