Possible conflict with Dropbox and Trend Micro (Dropbox freezing)

I would like to update that the problem resolved on our side now and here is the steps taken.

- Clean up the registry

- Uninstall and Install back Dropbox

- Uninstall and Install back Worry Free Business Security

------- Added Dropbox program files path in Approved List (just in case)

Also device speed improved quite a bit. We did not reinstall the windows.

Environment

- Windows 10 Pro (64-bit)

- Worry Free Business Security Services (Trend Micro)

I hope it helps to someone.

Lucio

The issue has been resolved by Trend Micro and we have confirmed that the Trend Micro fix worked and no longer have a freeze on start when Dropbox is set to run at startup as well. For reference, the Virus Pattern that contains the fix is 14.287.00.

Thanks to all of the users that reported this!

All comments

Hey @koltipelto,

Welcome to the Dropbox Community, I'd be glad to look into that with you!

Just to make sure that I have understood correctly, is Dropbox causing your devices to crash or is the Dropbox desktop application silently crashing on your computers?

You mention that this is a team-wide behavior. Are you experiencing this only on your Windows 10 machines?

As per your description below:

<SPAN class=" author-d-iz88z86z86za0dz67zz78zz78zz74zz68zjz80zz71z9iz90za3z66zsz65z7gz85zz86zz70zz79zz80z3z85z6z87ziz78zz83zigfz86zz80z5z80zblcz70zz86z">&nbsp;I got to format 2 of them, and still they keep crashing, they get frozen screen, I can not do anything, I have to force the physical button.</SPAN>

the issue persists outside Dropbox, meaning when the application is completely closed, which suggests that the cause is related to something on your Operating System that could be causing this. In case the above assumption is wrong, please let me know.

Will be awaiting your reply, so that we analyze the case together!

Warm regards,

JaneA

koltipelto

@JaneA Thanks for you reaply!

And sorry abou my englis.

Dropbox don't stop, the computer stopped, it's like freezing, i can't do nafen. What I did to be sure that was dropbox, I reboot the computer on safety mode, disable the Dropbox, OneDrive and fences program... And work for one day, no freezes, so I started to enable the others programs one each day... and yesterday enable the Dropbox than the computer freeze after like 4 minutes or less. Today the same computer is running perfect, but if out dropbox enable.

This issue is occurs if Windows 10-64 bits fully update and another one in Windows 7 (but the windows 7, now is on Windows 10, I had to format and update too).

What was strange, the windows 7 was if that problem, but when update to 10, the problem stop’s.

The other two on Windows 10 still if problem, one of than keeps using Dropbox but sometimes, just sometimes freezes, on other hand the desktop freezes every time when dropbox is on.

Just for record, I already tried to reinstall..

Hi, we're having the same problem with our computers running Windows 7 for most.

Half of them freeze when they start and it's impossible to open the Dropbox application. The only thing we can do is shut them down physically.

It's only happening since version 30.4.22 has been out about 2 weeks ago.

Hey @koltipelto & @WD,

Please accept my apologies for getting back to you in delay, let's look into the matter more!

@koltipelto: I have to admit the behavior is quite unexpected, since it appears that the application is causing your device to crash. Off the top of my head, seems like your computer can’t cope with the overall size of the client. As a first step, I’d suggest applying Selective Sync to the folders that you don't need to have see locally on your computer. If this persists I’d advise you to ask your admin to call in or chat in to our team through the admin console during our Business hours and provide us more details regarding the case. From this point on, my colleagues will take care care of your request. If there is a ticket I could reference, please include it in your reply and I’d more than glad to follow-up!

@WD: The issue you have experienced seems different than the one previously described, so I'll follow different steps with you. Please try rebooting your pc once and disable your antivirus or any other security program that may be preventing Dropbox from running as expected in the background.

If the issue persists, please let me know in your reply!

Warm regards,

JaneA

dflord

I have been having the same issue. Problem began when I applied selective sync. I did a full laptop reset, reinstalled everything and the issue returned. Since then, I have turned off selective sync and so far so good.

Running Windows 10 64bit (fully updated) on an HP Elitebook, Trend Micro for Antivirus, OneDrive for business, OneDrive personal, GoogleDrive, MS Office 2016, Quickbooks Desktop, Chrome.

JasonWolfgang

I am also having this exact issue. It only seems to happen when first logging in to the machine. This started when we enabled smart sync for our business dropbox account. We are 100% windows 10 and it seems random when a machine is affected. Quickly force quitting Dropbox and disabling the auto start feature fixes the issue. My laptop is one of the machines affected and I setup a delayed start task to start dropbox 5 min after login. For the most part that fixed the issue but still on occasion my system would hang.

I noticed you use Trend Micro which is also the AV we use so perhaps the issue is with how smart sync and Trend interact. I will have to do some testing to see if removing Trend and leaving Dropbox also fixes the issue.

Hey @dflord & @JasonWolfgang, I'd just like to follow-up on the matter, has this been resolved for you?

In case you need further assistance, I’d recommend logging a ticket with our team, so as to have a closer look at your account details & send over the most appropriate next steps.

Once you do, please let me know a ticket ID in your reply, so that I search up your request internally on our system and make sure a team members works with you as closely as possible.

Thanks in advance & I'll be awaiting your next message, so that we work on that together!

dflord

Hi Jane, thanks for your reply. I've simply turned off the selective sync feature and that has resolved the issue. If I have time, I'll turn it back on and see if the problem returns.

Thanks.

I appreciate your update here with the fix that worked for you @dflord, I’ve made sure to accept your last reply as a Solution, so that other users experiencing the same behavior check it in the future!

Glad to hear that you got this sorted, though I’ll also be here in case you need further assistance, so please don’t hesitate to reach back out to me at any time. Happy Friday! :slight_smile:

DonnyGold

We run 5 business’s, retail, and connect vital data through Dropbox. All new high end towers windows 10 in each location. Constant crashing and/or screen freezing. Turned off Dropbox Sync, Autostart and Exited program. It’s been 24 hrs without any issue. We had to restart computers every 20-30 minutes before.

CodyzzZ

I have a similar issue on Windows 10 where whenever I open a dropbox URL it crashes my chrome browser, killing any opened tabs. Tried everything including clearing cache and turning off extensions, to no avail. Works fine on other browsers but I default to Chrome so it is quite annoying. Turned off selective sync as you suggested and dropbox URL on Chrome works fine now. Disappointed at dropbox, but big thanks for your help.

cmbcmbcmb

Has anyone found more of a solution to this other than just disabling the selective sync feature? This isn't an option for those of us with hard drives smaller than the dropbox storage. For instance, we have well nearly 1 TB of data yet we're using Surface Pros with only 512 GB of storage. Its almost sounding like we have no choice but just to either tolerate the crashes or give up using dropbox.

Hey @cmbcmbcmb, thanks for posting on the Forum on this issue & welcome aboard!

I’d like to check back on the possible causes with you & we’ll take it from there, so as to send you the most relevant next troubleshooting steps.

In order to follow-up with you as closely as possible, could you include some more details on the behavior you’re experiencing in your next reply?

Firstly, are you running the latest Dropbox on your Surface (47.4.74)?
I’d appreciate a step-by-step description of what’s happening in your next message (as well as any troubleshooting you’ve done on your own), so as to make sure to reproduce with you and check the results I’m getting.

Once I have this info, I’d happily analyze the case in more depth. Happy Friday & thanks again!

cmbcmbcmb

Hello. Yes, I'm running the latest version (47.4.74).

Troubleshooting... At first, I believed it to be a Windows isuse, so I re-installed Win 10. Same issue immediately started occurring once I installed Dropbox and started using Selective Sync. There's no way for me to not use that as I have a 512 GB Surface Pro but more than that much data in dropbox. With Dropbox enabled, my machine is actively crashing to BSOD 1 to 2 times PER HOUR. As soon as I exit dropbox/stop the service, no issues. The only thing I can really do is leave Dropbox off until I'm going to head to bed, turn it on, and hope it gets the files backed up before crashing because each morning I come back to my machine, I have the BSOD reboot screen staring at me.

Honestly, if there is no solution to this, which I haven't so far been able to find online, there's really no choice but to switch to an alternative cloud provider who's software doesn't crash on Win 10. I already wasted 2+ days having to reformat and setup the machine, and, at the rate its going, its going to take a week or two to get the data back on my machine given its crashing any time I have Dropbox turned on. I really like Dropbox, been using it for a while, but if its not realiable, its basically become useless.

Thanks for providing the additional details here @cmbcmbcmb, I appreciate your ongoing cooperation & I understand that you’d like hands-on assistance from this point forward!

I’d suggest continuing this discussion via email & for that reason I’ve made sure to create a Support Request on our system on your behalf, so as to focus on the issue in question & move forward together. Whenever you find some time, please check your inbox for my email & I’ll make sure to promptly follow-up with you from where we’ve left off here.

Thanks again & I’m wishing you a wonderful week ahead!

heimburg

Wanted to add some info on this for the developers...

We're also experiencing freeze-ups with our business plan. We use selective sync and we have a very large number of files (a million or so). The crashes started a few months ago, and I'm not sure what the impetus was. It took a long time to figure out our different crashes on different machines were caused by dropbox.

Sometimes the mouse cursor (and the rest of the machine) will freeze up for a few seconds. And sometimes that freeze-up becomes permanent, requiring a hard-reboot to fix the crash.

Recently we've found that that reducing Max CPU Usage from 100% to 85% fixes the freeze ups. (This is an advanced Power Plan option -- in control panel, power options, edit the power plan, then Change advanced power settings, and find the Processor power management options.)

This workaround has fixed the problem on several machines, and I can't really fathom why. We're game developers so we have lots of hardware on hand, and we had this problem with both AMD and Intel CPUs, and several kinds of motherboards. (None overclocked, and mostly all new hardware.) So it seems unlikely to be a hardware-specific problem, but the crashes leave no obviously-useful information in the event log, so it doesn't seem like a driver is crashing either.

Can this info be passed along to the developers? This is a pretty severe bug, and I'm hoping we can offer a clue for them. Keeping our CPUs capped isn't a permanently viable answer, although it works for now.

Thanks for posting us here on the matter @heimburg, I understand that you’d like some assistance on this matter, as this has been affecting your team & you’ve already done some troubleshooting on your own.

I understand your concern & for that reason I’ve made sure to reach out to you directly via email (on the email address connected to your Forum profile), since this is an account-specific inquiry that needs to be addressed by a specialized team member via our Official Support channel.

At your convenience, please check your inbox for my latest message and let me know here if you have any issues locating it. Once you get back to me, I’ll make sure to redirect your request to the appropriate team, who’ll answer any account-specific sensitive questions you may have.

Thanks again & I’ll be awaiting your next email, so as to move forward on the matter together. Welcome to our Forum!

We are also having this problem with a couple of machines. They have the latest Win10 updates, latest hardware updates including BIOS.

If Dropbox is enabled for startup, the computer will freeze within a few minutes. If it is disabled, the computer performs as expected and then Dropbox can be started manually.

Thanks for the input heimburg - this provides more info on what we've seen and thanks to this thread I'll be checking selective sync on these computers.

Hey @Rob21, thanks for posting us here regarding the issue you’ve experienced on your desktop, I’ll do my best to work with you towards a fix!

Of course, applying Selective sync for the content you’d like to keep on your account online (though don’t necessarily need locally) would be a great starting point, though I’d rather further advise after checking your account details.

As I’d like to help you on the matter as much as possible, I’ve made sure to run a search on our system on my end, I’ve located your newest open ticket & I’ve made sure to reply to you there. This way, I’ll send you the most appropriate next steps based on the info I have on my tools & help you reach a resolution as quickly as possible.

Whenever you find some time, please check your inbox for my email & I’ll make sure to promptly follow-up with you from where we’ve left off here.

Thanks again & I’ll be awaiting your next email, so as to move forward on the matter together!

I am having the same issue and it is Windows 10 with latest update and pretty reasonable specification. I have been working on from 3-4 days and once disabled the Dropbox from Start Up then the laptop is fine otherwise it freezes in a minute from startup. You do not get chance to do anything.

Tried all the steps but no real luck, even reducing the processory from 100% to 85% but issue remains.

so really waiting to get this resolved or we might have to use ulternate solutions.

Where did you turn off selective sync?

In the desktop client I have Smart Sync and Selective Sync. We use Smart Sync and there is a checkbox for it. Selective Sync only has a list of folders to sync to this computer and I have "select all" ticked.

In the admin console I can't find Selective Sync, only Smart Sync.

I now have two computers in my organisation three in one client's and one in another client that freeze and are solved by disabling Dropbox on boot.

Edit: one machine in my org is Windows 7...

Hello again, I hope my message finds you well!

Initially, it’s my understanding, that @binary refers to @dflord’s Solution in the first page @Rob21. Can you please let me know if I'm right in my assumption @binary?

Following, because I understand that you'd need further assistance on this issue @binary, I’ve made sure to run a search on our system on my end & I’ve located your open ticket. In order to expedite matters, I’ve raised your support priority internally & I’ve notified my colleague handling the issue on your comments here.

Please check your inbox for their latest message & include all relevant info on that discussion, so as to check your account info based on the details we have on our tools.

Rest assured that you’re in safe hands from now on & I hope this gets resolved soon for you. Welcome to our Dropbox Community!

Johnwho92

I'm having the same issue on a customers PC i disabled it from startup and manually opening it later and now the computer isnt freezing.

not an ideal solution but atleast they can use the computer :upside_down:

Using Windows 10, Trend Micro AV

You are right Jane, after gone through this Blog and as it says "Solved" but did not help me at all. In our case it was not Windows latest Feature update 1803 as this started happening before.

In our case, the anti-virus ie Worry Free Business Security Services (Trend Micro) and Dropbox conflicting to a level that its making the device to freeze. Either disabled the Dropbox from Startup or Uninstallation of Trend help resolved the probelm straight.

I will be reinstalling the Trend Again and see if it helps.

Interesting. All of the problems we are having include Trend Micro WFBS-Services and Dropbox. The workaround is to disable Dropbox on startup and manually start a minute or two later.

Hi Rob21,
Starting manually after a minute or two later does not help as in our instance it was still freezing. And very hard to expect from the end-user to do it.

Yes - understand that we can't rely on end users.

I'm going to work at this from both ends and have started communication with Trend Micro.

I would like to update that the problem resolved on our side now and here is the steps taken.

- Clean up the registry

- Uninstall and Install back Dropbox

- Uninstall and Install back Worry Free Business Security

------- Added Dropbox program files path in Approved List (just in case)

Also device speed improved quite a bit. We did not reinstall the windows.

Environment

- Windows 10 Pro (64-bit)

- Worry Free Business Security Services (Trend Micro)

I hope it helps to someone.

Thanks. What did you use to clean the registry?