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Dropbox stuck downloading to Windows

BobP45

I've had a problem for the past few weeks with Dropbox no longer successfully downloading (syncing) from the server to my Windows 10 computer; it is somehow stuck or blocked and "Downloading 34 files..." forever. These are mostly images from my Samsung Android phone using the Android Dropbox app for Camera Uploads. Please see the attached screenshots for my sync settings and the current status.

00 Downloading 34 files.jpg 00 Downloading 34 files partial waiting.jpg

I am not using Smart Sync, nor Selective sync. All files are stored locally on my computer in E:\Dropbox, this ****** drive has currently 1.2 TB free. My files on Dropbox are currently at 28.1% of my paid 2.1 TB plan, ca. 590 GB. There are no shared files, my 50 Mbit internet dsl connection is working fine, no other app is having any problems. The affected files are all on the Dropbox server.

I have thoroughly looked through the related posts in this forum and also been in contact with Dropbox support.

What I have tried thus far:

1. Alt-H on the Windows Dropbox preferences Account tab and Fix Permissions and Fix Hardlinks; no effect.

2. Advanced reinstall of Dropbox, no change.

3. Support told me having ca. 300,000 files could lead to performance problems, but I would say a plan with 2.1 TB is obviously going to involve a lot of files. But this is no decline in performance, it simply stopped downloading at all.

4. Complete reinstall of Windows 10 (ouch). After getting everything up and running again, Dropbox did finish downloading and everything appeared to be fine.

5. Then about one week later, the same problem appeared, which is where I am now. The last file successfully downloaded and saved in my Dropbox\Camera Uploads folder on my computer was "2022-03-16 18.05.11.jpg" from which the date can be inferred. As shown on the second screenshot, it claims to have downloaded "2022-03-18 09.17.12.jpg" but this is not the case, the file(s) are not there. This list from the sync history changes all the time, it will eventually list all files in the list as "Download complete" but then shortly later it will again say "Waiting to sync..." The downloading number is not increasing above 34 files because I have turned off Camera Uploads on Dropbox on the Android. Which of course does not help getting my photos to the computer. I'm hoping this problem can be solved so I can go back to using Camera Uploads.

Thanks for any help and/or suggestions!

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Hannah

Hey @BobP45, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

The advice you got from our support team about the number of files in your Dropbox folder is super valid.

So, I would definitely suggest you use
selective sync to remove some folders and bring down the file count, to see if that helps.

Do let me know how it goes and we'll take it from there.

BobP45

Thanks Hannah, I'll give it a try. Would the effect be the same if instead of selective sync, I right-clicked on a large folder and selected Smart Sync->Online Only?

I have a smaller laptop where I use Smart Sync for all of Dropbox, and with "Save ****** drive space automatically" enabled, and it works fine with all those files.

The problem is on my main desktop computer where I have plenty of disk space, so I wanted to have everything stored locally there. And if all the files are not stored locally, it affects my online backup service and backups to external drives. I like to have multiple backups all over the place Lol. So I may need to think over my concept of which files I really need to have on Dropbox if it can't handle all those files.

Anyway I'll give one of those methods a try to see if it helps, thanks again.

Hannah

Thanks for the update here.

I do understand where you're coming from.

Indeed, these two features differ, in the sense that selective sync will remove the files from the Dropbox folder completely.

Whereas, making a folder online-only will just stop it from taking up space in your ****** drive, but it will still appear in the Dropbox folder.

If you can just try it out, and let us know, that'd be awesome!

BobP45

Ok, with Selective sync I deselected the entire "My Pictures" folder under Dropbox, which had 65 GB and over 65,000 files. That folder is now gone from my computer. After Dropbox finished, it was still "Downloading 38 files...", the same as before with a couple added from my laptop. It is still unable to download any files from the server to local storage in my Dropbox folder, it just keeps trying forever. I also restarted Windows, but the problem remained. Oh, I just realized this was not a folder to which Dropbox had been trying to download, maybe I should try de-selecting one of those? Will do that later today.

I'd be happy to try any other suggestions to get this problem fixed. Does Dropbox have any troubleshooting tools for the user such as a logging or debugging facility I can enable? That would possibly help to find out why Dropbox can't store the files. (BTW Dropbox is enabled for both private and public networks in my Windows Defender Firewall.)

Thanks, Bob

Jay

Hi @BobP45, can you see the sync activity to see which files are trying to download in the desktop app?

Likewise, are there any sync issues when clicking the avatar in the desktop app?

BobP45

Hi @Jay

yes, you can see the files Dropbox is trying to download, they are also shown in the screen shot in my original post above. There were a few sync issues due to illegal characters in the file names from Android, but I deleted these files on the Dropbox server and there are no longer any sync issues.

Hi@"Hannah"

I deselected the Camera Uploads folder with Selective sync. This folder was 350 GB and had just over 100,000 files. (First I had archived its contents to a folder outside of Dropbox, then I deleted them from the Dropbox server and waited for it to complete and show an empty folder.) Now my Dropbox folder on this computer is only 160 GB and has about 130,000 files. After setting up Selective sync and hitting OK, Dropbox got stuck again, this time with "Downloading 101,300 files...". I assume it was trying to index the changes or something like that. I waited over an hour and this status and number of files did not change.

I then quit and uninstalled Dropbox, restarted Windows, did an advanced reinstall of Dropbox and after it finished indexing all the changes, it is unfortunately back to where it was before, now "Downloading 26 files..." forever. (Before it had been 34 files, but 8 of them had been from the Camera Uploads folder which is now empty.) As mentioned before, the Sync history list shows these 26 files either as "Download complete" or as "Waiting to sync..." If I hold the mouse pointer over the ones with "Waiting to sync..." it will start to sync them and then show "Download complete". But the files never appear at the appropriate place in my Dropbox folder on the computer. If I restart Windows, then all these files will again show "Waiting to sync..." and then eventually display as "Download complete". So maybe the files get downloaded but Dropbox can't save them to the local drive for some reason? Can't believe the code doesn't notice the error and flags a problem or at least logs what is happening. (I also again did the "Fix permissions" and "Fix hardlinks" but that didn't help.) Would be good to know what triggered this in the first place as I have been using Dropbox for several years with no problems.

So as it is still unable to download and store any files from the server on this computer, Dropbox is basically useless at the moment. If I add new files to the Dropbox server from another source, the number in "Downloading nn files..." increases respectively and they also don't get really downloaded and stored. FWIW Dropbox works fine on my laptop.

Anything else to try?

Thanks, Bob

Jay

Thanks for the info, I'd recommend getting in contact with the support team directly for further assistance.

Once you get a ticket ID from the automated response, please let me know the number here so I can locate it in our system.

BobP45

Thanks Jay, was in the process of replying to my last message when yours came in.

Dropbox seems to be working now. I let it run overnight and this morning it had finished downloading and it is now also downloading new files from the Android device. Then I turned off selective sync (re-enabled all folders) and those folders got downloaded again as well.

So it may have been either the large Camera Uploads folder with 350 GB and 100,000+ files (which has now been archived and no longer under Dropbox, which now has a fresh new Camera Uploads folder), or also a mirroring application I use to backup the drive the Dropbox folder is on to another drive in real time, which I disabled last evening. I have been using the mirroring app for many years with no problems. Whatever, it seems to work now.

Many thanks to @Hannah and you @Jay

Jay

No worries! Please let us know if you experience any issues in the future.

Enjoy your weekend!