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Desktop app shows a blank screen when signing in

This error started after I unlinked Dropbox on my laptop and reinstalled it. Since then, when I click on "Sign in", the "Set Up Dropbox" window that opens is blank, and stays that way.

This is an "old" issue: there are a number of posts in DB Community about this, the most recent that I could find in April 2019. The cause implicated in the various proposed solutions is that the sign-in screen (a browser-like window) evidently attempts to communicate in a manner that some eg corporate networks / antivirus / routers block; so disabling or avoiding or switching those things has fixed the problem in some cases (as does/did disabling "early releases").

As to my own set-up, I have done fairly extensive user-level unsuccessful debugging, including: uninstalling and reinstalling the app; disabling Defender and antivirus completely; doing a clean boot then installing and running Dropbox; connecting to different ISPs / wifi networks; and uninstalling and reinstalling several legacy versions of the app. Early releases wasn't and isn't on.

As it happens I have two very similar laptops, both HP Spectre 360s, both running Windows 10 (same build), both connected to my home network. With the current version of the Dropbox app version installed, I am able to sign into Dropbox on one of them (the "Set Up Dropbox" window displays and works perfectly) and on the other I can't.

I suppose the next thing to try would be to reset Windows, but naturally I would rather not!

It seems very odd that this problem has been occurring and reoccurring since at least 2016 (going by the posts to community forum), for something of rather simple functionality - a window to authenticate the user and collect information from him/her about initial settings. Curious to know why this can't just be rebuilt to go through a browser like everything else!

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Lusil

Hey @momsahib, thanks for checking in with us and awesome work on the troubleshooting!

Out of curiosity, is the account that you're trying to sign into on your computer a Basic one? You can check this by going to the Plan tab.

If it is, could you make sure that you have two or less already connected devices on your Security tab?

Let me know what you find, cheers!

momsahib

It's a Plus account.

Lusil

Thanks for getting back to me, @momsahib.

Are you by any chance remotely accessing the desktop app from another device or using a virtual machine?

Looking forward to hearing back from you!

momsahib

Nope is just a regular ol' vanilla laptop running up to date Windows 10.

momsahib

I have also asked Dropbox Support for help with this problem. They just sent me the following (none of which I've tried yet; I copy-pasted this without formatting and inserted line breaks):

To ensure that the software is working correctly, I’d like you to do a complete reinstall to try to fix the problem. This will not affect or remove the files in your Dropbox folder.

Please save and quit all programs accessing files in the Dropbox folder, and then follow these instructions:

Note: Please be sure to take note or take a screenshot of any Selective Sync settings you may have applied as well as the location of your Dropbox folder (if not in the default location) prior to re-installing, as you will need to match these settings upon re-install.

1) Quit Dropbox:

Click the Dropbox icon in the system tray at the bottom of your screen.

Click on your profile picture or initials to the right of the search bar, and select "Quit Dropbox".

2) Uninstall Dropbox:

Click on the Start button in the bottom left of your screen, and select Control Panel (7), or type Control Panel at the Start screen or start menu, and click on it (10, 8).

Click "Uninstall a Program".

Select Dropbox from the list of programs and click "Uninstall".

Or follow the steps outlined in our Help Center article:

https://www.dropbox.com/help/41

3) When the uninstall finishes, please restart your computer to ensure that the uninstall is complete.

4) After this, please proceed to delete remaining registry entries:

a) Click the Start button. Type REGEDIT in the search box and press Enter.

b) In the Registry Editor, navigate into the following locations until you find the keys for "Dropbox" and "DropboxUpdate", they will be in either or both of the following two locations:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\

c) In both or either of these folders, please delete only the "Dropbox" and "DropboxUpdate" folders by right-clicking on the individual folders and selecting "Delete".

5) Then, please delete the Dropbox remaining folders:

a) Open a Windows File Explorer (not Internet Explorer).

b) Type %LOCALAPPDATA% into the address bar (include the % percent signs) and press enter.

c) Delete the folder "Dropbox" from the resulting window.

d) Please repeat these steps with the following folders as well (it's OK if you don't find a Dropbox folder in any of those locations):

%APPDATA%

%PROGRAMFILES%

%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%

e) Then restart your system.

Please note that deleting any of these folders will not delete the files in your Dropbox folder.

6) Download the newest version of Dropbox from the following website:

https://www.dropbox.com/downloading

7) Navigate to the folder where you downloaded the installation file and double click on it.

8) During the initial setup and sign in process apply any Selective Sync settings you may have had prior to the reinstall and select the Dropbox folder location (if not in the default location).

IMPORTANT NOTE: Because this process removes the previous settings and configuration, if you wish to avoid re-downloading your Dropbox content you will need to manually choose the location for Dropbox to sync to, otherwise you will create a new Dropbox folder and start to download your content again.

To select your already established folder on your drive, after signing in and choosing which folders to sync, and before you click on "Open my Dropbox folder", you should see an "Advanced Settings" link, click on this.

Then you can choose the parent folder of the already established Dropbox folder, for example, if you have your Dropbox folder in the path "D:\OtherDrive\Folder\Dropbox (Team)" you'll want to select the folder "D:\OtherDrive\Folder".

At the end of this process, after clicking "Open my Dropbox folder", it might take some time to re-index the files and sync any pending changes.

Please note that any changes made to the files in the Dropbox folder, the web interface or other linked devices while the folder was "off-line", will generate conflicted copies:

https://www.dropbox.com/help/36

Finally, this process only works when linking to the exact same account that was previously linked to this computer. If you'd like to merge accounts, please refer to the following Help Center article:

https://www.dropbox.com/help/9104

Please let me know if the issue persists, and I will have this escalated to my advanced team. I'd also appreciate if you attach a screenshot of the blank screen, on your response.

Daphne

Hi there @momsahib!

It looks like my colleague suggest an advanced reinstall of the app. It would be a good place to start as this will allow you to do a clean install again on your computer.

Also, would you mind sharing your ticket number with me here so that I can check on this from my side too?

Cheers!

momsahib

This is Ticket #11379900.

momsahib

I completed the advanced install instructions (which -- I realized as I worked through the process -- very likely doesn't do anythingthat Revo Uninstaller doesn't already do, but, whatever).

Then I restarted Windows, turned off my antivirus, its firewall, the Windows Firewall (and turned off various Windows privacy and security settings), changed my default browser to Edge and reset it, downloaded the Dropbox installer, and installed Dropbox.

And got the blank sign-in screen again.

Just wondering how much more work I have to do at my end before someone at Dropbox actually looks at this problem. Don't get me wrong, I'll soldier on here as long as I'm asked to try various things.

But as I mentioned as the very beginning of this thread, this is an "old" recurring Dropbox problem that seemingly hasn't really been addressed by Dropbox.

Daphne

I see, thanks for your update on this @momsahib.

I've passed along your comments to your ticket with my colleague. At this point, I would suggest to give them a quick nudge there as you would need to continue through our Support channel.

They can look into this with you alongside some device specific info which we can't do here via the Community, and so that we don't interrupt the troubleshooting with different suggestions.

If you have any other questions in the meantime, please don't hesitate to get back to me here. Cheers!