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The Dropbox folder has been moved on one Windows PC

ozstar

I have DB on a few PCs and they are all fine and are loaded and look the same in the Explorer tree.

Dropbox is under Quick Access.

and in Dropbox prefs show as c:/users/user/dropbox

But…

this one PC this morning was different, had changed from that,

The Dropbox folder was now in c:/my/Dropbox.

I also se it is continuusly updared so slowing the PC down.

In Task Manager it says Dropbox Tray (9) with 32% CPU and 33% Memory usage.

My DP is 256.43790 and PC is Win 10 Pro 22H2 19045.7417

Please help as it is causing us problems.

Thank you

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Jay

Hi @ozstar, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Are you able to move the Dropbox folder using these steps?

Does this help to resolve the CPU and RAM usage you're experiencing?

ozstar

Thank you. I have the Pref panel open but at Dropbox Folder location it shows c:\My\Dropbox.

I cannot right click it as it only allows Click to Copy.

It has a button Change Location and a Select Folder comes up.

When I enter $Home it says.. The path does not exist.

So not sure what to do now.

Jay

Could you try manually locating the folder instead of using the Windows shortcut ($HOME) in order to find the default user folder?

As you mentioned, it should be C:/Users/User, depending on whether or not you have a different username for your profile.

ozstar

Ah ha.. Yes I have located user/user however I see a Dropbox folder with the little blue DB icon on it, but the files are not the files of the Dropbox I have been using. They are dated years ago.

. I am not sure where they are from, but maybe i can delete them and that folder and replace it with the correct one.

I'm not sure where they came from either.

ozstar

ozstar

I cannot move the folder as it says I have to close some files. I can't see what files it wants.

I think I need to totally take DB off this PC and start again.

How to do that please?

Jay

You can do an advanced reinstallation of the Dropbox desktop application by using these steps.

As there seems to be an older Dropbox folder in the default location, it might be best to delete the older folder before attempting the reinstallation, to prevent your current files from being overwritten by the old files.

ozstar

Morning here now. I left the PC on overnight and it is saying now Updating 13541 files and it goes down then goes up and them down again but the flow is going down. 13369 as I wrote that then 4 mins later Every now and then I ee it is syncing, then back to Updating. 13381, now 13275.

I remember now when I think this happened. I did a sfc /scannow on the drive.

I do want to re set it up so will follow the instructions offered above. But first I do want to scan the drive so how to do. Do I pause the Dropbox sync or delete it all then scannow then re setup?

I am a concerned I will lose some files so will back up the whole dropbox folder to an external drive as an insurance before deleting. Good idea?

Megan

Hey there, @ozstar!

That sounds like a solid plan.

Here's what I'm going to suggest next: check your account online to ensure that your most up-to-date files are showing up there. If you happen to have an external hard drive, please make a backup copy of your local Dropbox folder.

The next step will be performing an advanced reinstall by following the instructions. Once the app is fresh, you can utilize selective sync during the installation process to prevent everything from downloading at once if you want. This ensures that whatever you do sync starts as online-only, saving valuable space on your device.

I'll be waiting for your updates!

ozstar

Many thanks for that.

This is what ChapGPT tells me after i explain what happened..

</Quote>

That set of numbers is actually a very useful clue, and it explains a lot of what you’ve been seeing.

What your folder stats mean

Size: 412 GB
Size on disk: 31.5 GB
~30,000 files

The key part is:

“Size on disk” is much smaller than “Size”

That usually means a large portion of your Dropbox files are online-only placeholders (Smart Sync / Files On-Demand) rather than fully stored locally.

So what’s happening now is very likely:

Dropbox is NOT downloading 1.5 TB

It is:

Rebuilding its local database
Re-checking thousands of placeholder files
Reconciling what exists locally vs cloud state

That aligns perfectly with:

“Updating 20,000 files”
Then gradually decreasing
CPU staying relatively low
Windows Defender also scanning activity

Why this suddenly started today

The most likely trigger is one of these:

Windows update changed file indexing or permissions
Dropbox update forced a re-scan
Defender scan + Dropbox scan interaction
SFC attempt briefly touched system/file metadata
Restart or disk check earlier today

Any of those can cause Dropbox to think:

“I need to re-verify a large portion of my file tree.”

Why Explorer path changed to `C:\My\Dropbox`

That’s actually consistent with a custom Dropbox location being set at some point. It’s not harmful, just non-standard.

Most important conclusion

Nothing you’ve shown so far suggests corruption or failure.

In fact, your data strongly suggests:

Dropbox is healthy
Your files are largely cloud-backed (not local-heavy)
It is performing a large reconciliation/index rebuild
It is slowly working through ~30,000 items

What I would do now

✅ Continue letting it run

Because:

It is progressing
CPU is not abnormal
Disk usage is low
No sync errors reported

⚠️ Avoid:

Reinstalling Dropbox (would restart the whole process)
Moving large active databases around right now while it’s still updating

Bottom line

Your Dropbox is not “broken” or reinstall-needed right now.
It’s doing a large metadata reconciliation of ~30,000 items, which matches your 412 GB cloud library + placeholder local structure.

If the number keeps steadily decreasing over the next few hours, you’re on the normal recovery path.

If you want, I can also explain why Windows + Dropbox + Defender together can suddenly cause exactly this kind of “everything is updating” behaviour—it’s a fairly common combo issue on Win 10.

</unquote>

Hannah

Thanks for checking back, @ozstar.

What is the current situation with your Dropbox app? How did things go with the advanced reinstallation?

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