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Synching never stops, says updating for 5 days!

TFCtenor1

I have DropBox Plus (paid plan). Have had it for years. I had to re-attach to an existing DropBox folder on my second internal [REMOVED AS PER COMMUNITY GUIDELINES] drive and, after uninstalling and re-installing DropBox and a little registry cleaning, DropBox is working fine...except it keeps synching constantly. My cooling fan is getting exhausted and my CPU runs at 100% with DropBox synching. The status in the task bar shows "Indexing nnn files (x minutes) and Uploading yyy files" where x, n and y jump all over the place and never go to zero. Rolling up the status pane in the task bar reads "Checking for Updates. Please hold while we make sure everything is up to date". I have uninstalled and rebooted and reinstalled a number of times.

I searched the knowledge base and didnt find a solution. I sent email to DropBox several days ago and no answer (but they did send an email asking how their suport was!) It wasn't.

Any ideas as how to fix this?

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Desktop

Sync

Dropbox Plus

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Accepted answers

TFCtenor1

After weeks and weeks of back and forth I finally received the answer which did work:

Note in the answer below, if your DropBox folder is not in the default location, like on a second Data drive on your machine and not the OS drive, then you will need to modify the DOS commands below as %HOMEPATH% and %APPDATA% and %LOCALAPPDATA% refer to your default (C:\) Drive.

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1) If Dropbox is running:

- Click on the Dropbox icon in the system tray
- Click on your profile picture or initials and select "Quit"

2) Press the Windows Key + R then type "cmd" and press enter to open the Command prompt.

3) Copy and paste the following lines into the Command Prompt, one at a time, and press RETURN after each one. PLEASE make sure you copy and paste these commands(don't type them by hand), as getting them wrong could cause some harm. Also, you can only paste them by right clicking and selecting “Paste”. Don't worry if one of the instructions below fail or you can't find the folder in one of these locations. This is normal.

icacls "%HOMEPATH%\Dropbox" /grant "%USERNAME%":(F) /T

icacls "%APPDATA%\Dropbox" /grant "%USERNAME%":(F) /T

icacls "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Dropbox" /grant "%USERNAME%":(F) /T

NOTE: Please copy/paste the output of each command in a .txt file, in case further troubleshooting is needed.

4) Restart Dropbox from Start -> All Programs. Please also restart your computer.

All comments

Jay

Hi @TFCtenor1, thanks for joining the Community!

High CPU usage could be caused from various reasons, such as too many files, invalid permissions and so on. This article should help with checking each one.

If they don’t work, could you try the steps in this thread to see if you can repair the hardlinks in the Dropbox folder to see if it helps the app to sync?

Let me know how it goes!

TFCtenor1

Thank you but the suggestions did not help and we are now into around 10 days of constant DropBox synching saying "Checking for Updates. Please hold while we make sure everything is up to date". and the constantly saying it is uploading and indexing.

Anyone else have any ideas...anyone know how to get hold of anyone at DropBox?

Jay

Apologies for the delay, @TFCtenor1, you can contact Dropbox support directly using this link for further assistance on this matter.

TFCtenor1

After weeks and weeks of back and forth I finally received the answer which did work:

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akh1002

Any advice for dealing with this on a mac?

Walter

Hi @akh1002; welcome aboard and sorry to hear about your syncing issue.

Can you please perform the following steps and let us know how it goes?

1. Make sure the Dropbox desktop application is running

2. Click on the Dropbox icon in your menu bar and then click your profile picture or initials

3. Select 'Preferences'

4. Click on the 'Account' tab

5. Hold down the 'Option/Alt' key

6. Click on the 'Fix Permissions' button (make sure you're still holding down the 'Option/Alt' key)

7. You may be prompted for your a username and password, this is your computer login credentials, not your Dropbox account ones.

[This will allow Dropbox access to your home folder, Dropbox folder, and any required settings.]

If this didn't help improve matters, you can follow the steps 1 to 5 and on the 6th step this time click on the 'Fix Hardlinks' button.

Just note that if you use “Fix Permissions” syncing will start back over so if you need to use this step, please allow for a few hours to pass and let us know if syncing becomes stuck again.

Thanks!

Leonnow100

Hi there,

i am facing the same issue and found this! but it seems the command below when i copied included a :disappointed face in it.

Can you help to type the correct command?

Screenshot 2021-01-24 100423.png

ss_dreaming

I have had dropbox for years. Personal (free) and work accounts. I just upgraded the personal account to move files from my NAS device and go full cloud. Now my home laptop (Windows 10) will not sync; it is freezing up. I have tried all the above items to correct the issue, but nothing has worked. That includes:

- Reinstall dropbox after clearing the cache

- Reinstall dropbox after renaming the dropbox folder so it has to rebuild itself

- Using the ALT-H to fix hardlinks, then fix permissions

- turn off windows firewall (although I noted dropbox is whitelisted)

- look for exclusions in windows antivirus

This is what I see. CPU is maxed, no network activity, dropbox app will not open windows explorer. Takes a long time to quit dropbox app.

Screenshot 2021-01-23 234038.png

Please provide guidance as to next steps.

robert k.51

i have the same problem

Walter

Hey peeps; thanks for your messages!

For anyone still affected by this, note that the development team has released a new beta version of the Dropbox desktop application that may resolve the issue you are experiencing.

Can you try installing it from this page and let us know if it helped improve matters?

riclewallen

this page link: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-desktop-client-builds/Beta-Build-115-3-553/td-p/491097%C2%A0

returns error message:

Walter

Thanks for flagging this @riclewallen.

I amended the link and it should be working fine now. Could you give it another go now?

alexonskiogc

I was having problems with Dropbox using 100% of my CPU for long periods of time (typically 7-40 minutes) whenever a sync occurred (e.g. upon restart, wake from sleep, after file saves). I have my Dropbox folders in a nonstandard location in \Dropbox, and this problem has been getting increasingly worse over the past year. I am running a 2013 windows 8.1 machine, so not the fastest by today's standards, but this probably makes the problem much more noticeable than for others with newer machines.

I originally found the suggestion to use the first two of the icacls commands suggested here by @TFCtenor1 (but not the third) in an older post from 2017 by @Jane here:

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-installs-integrations/Constant-CPU-Usage-Windows-10-x64/m-p/229790/highlight/true#M54366

I tried Jane's suggestion, even though it was not marked as an accepted solution, and to my amazement, the high CPU usage problem is now gone! I have since run the third icacls command noted by TFCtenor1 above, just to be complete.

I suspect that my problem may have been related to the fact that my Dropbox folders are in an nonstandard location. If you are having problems with Dropbox pegging your CPU for long periods of time and you have a nonstandard location for your Dropbox folders, you might want to give this a try.