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Dropbox desktop app is installed but won't open (windows 10)

Dropbox icon shows up in the system tray (in white) for a few seconds then disappears & it's not in the overflow area. Machine just came back from repair shop, where the tech unexpectedly installed lots of updates, reinstalled Chrome (I lost everything except passwords), and may have reinstalled Dropbox. I don't want to use the new Dropbox interface; I prefer to stay with access via File Explorer.

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Hannah

Hi @RoyWilliams3, welcome aboard our Community!

About the Dropbox icon disappearing from your system tray, can you try uninstalling the Dropbox application, restarting your computer and then reinstalling it, to see if that helps?

Just, before you do that, keep in mind that if you have a free Dropbox account, you can only have up to 3 devices linked to your account. So, if this one gets disconnected and you have more than 3 already, you won't be able to reconnect it, until you delete enough devices from your account settings.

As for the setting that opens your files in the Dropbox application, you can follow the steps here to change it back to the file explorer folder.

Let me know how that works out for you!

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Hannah

RoyWilliams3

Thank you. Uninstalling & reinstalling (after deleting old devices I don't even have any more!) did the trick.

Hannah

Perfect, happy to hear that, Roy!

Make sure to let us know if you ever need anything else.

Happy Friday!

RoyWilliams3

Hi, Hannah (or anyone who can help me),

The same thing just happened again! Dropbox is installed on my Windows 10 desktop, but didn't open at startup for some unknown reason. I got it to open, it did the usual indexing, uploaded a changed file or two to the cloud & said it was up to date. Then I tried to undelete a folder that I had accidentally deleted in a recent cleanup. (It does still exist in the Dropbox cloud). Suddenly the black Dropbox logo disappeared from the tray. When I tried to reopen Dropbox, the logo re-appeared in the tray in white for a few seconds then disappeared.

Do I have to uninstall & reinstall Dropbox again? I want to get to the bottom of whatever the underlying problem is so I don't have to do that every few days. Thanks in advance for your help, Roy Williams

Hannah

Hey Roy, thanks for nudging me on this.

I'm sorry to hear you're still having the same issue.

Can you try our more advanced reinstall of the application and let me know if it helps?

Thanks!

RoyWilliams3

Thanks for replying so quickly. Before I start the "advanced install", I have a question--

What exactly is the default location for my Dropbox folder?

In File Explorer it now appears to be located in two places: directly under Desktop, but also under Roy. I don't think this a duplication (it has the same time/date stamp, etc.), but just another peculiarity of the File Explorer tree structure: Desktop appears to be under Roy & Roy appears to be under Desktop.

Before I upgraded from 7 to 10 I believe it was under Users/Roy, and I certainly never intended to put it in a non-default location. I'm the only "User" on this machine.

I hope you can clarify, so I don't make the situation any worse.

Thanks again,

Roy

Hannah

No worries, Roy, I hope you had a great weekend!

You should be able to see the location of your Dropbox folder, if you open the Dropbox application preferences and go to the 'Sync' tab.

RoyWilliams3

Hannah (or whoever can help me): I uninstalled, rebooted, deleted the only Dropbox folder I found (in PROGRAMFILES(X86)), and downloaded and double-clicked Dropboxinstaller.exe. It took about 3 minutes to download the desktop app. The install ran for about three more minutes before apparently stopping. It got far enough that my Dropbox folder in File Explorer (C:\Users\Roy\Dropbox) changed back from a generic folder icon to the familiar blue Dropbox icon, and Dropbox reappeared in my list of apps in the Start box.

I tried double-clicking the Dropbox icon in the Start box. After a pause, the Dropbox icon briefly appeared in white in the tray but disappeared after a few seconds. This is the same behavior as before I did the Uninstall three weeks ago; I guess I've been putting off the Advanced Reinstall because I was afraid this would happen 😧.

Please help me if you can. This is my primary work computer & it's getting more & more out of sync with my Windows 7 laptops on which Dropbox is still working fine.

Thank you,

Roy Williams

Hannah

Thanks for updating me on this, Roy!

Can I reach out to you via email, on the address you have here on the Community, so we can look into this a bit more?

RoyWilliams3

Certainly, Hannah, I would love to discuss this via email. The latest strange development is that after three days Dropbox finished installing this morning without my doing anything. I noticed a gray Dropbox icon appeared in the tray; I clicked on it & was able to login in with my email address and previous Dropbox account password. Dropbox accepted it and proceeded to start working. It took it a while to re-index thousands of small files, and I had a number of file conflicts to resolve, but now it's working fine and my Windows 7 & Window 10 machines are in sync again.

For the next four days I will be away in a campground with very poor WiFi, so we will probably have to postpone the discussion until next week. But now the urgency is removed.

Roy Williams

Hannah

Alright, Ray, thanks for keeping me up to date with this!

If you see that the problem returns, make sure to let me know.

Have a great weekend!

RoyWilliams3

Hannah:

Please do reply to my email address. After working for one day & syncing with my other PC's, Dropbox is again refusing to open. (White logo appears in tray for two seconds & disappears.)

Thanks in advance for your help.

Roy Williams

Hannah

Sure thing, Roy, I just reached out to you, so make sure to check your email!

beuiot

Hello,

I had the same issue on win10 that drove me nuts. Suddenly dropbox just stopped working. Advanced reinstalls, disabling firewall and antivirus did nothing: dropbox installed, but did not run (either no systray, either a systray + quickly a window then crash). No error message, nothing. I got in a very frustrating support loop that kept telling me to disable my antivirus and reinstall dropbox.

After 5 days of struggling, I finally got it working by updating my intel graphics UHD drivers (from 30.0.100.9805 to 30.0.101.1404). Dropbox now works flawlessly. I hope this helps someone else!