Child Item

Dropbox app on Windows 11 intermittently hangs.

Application Affected
Dropbox folder and tray application
Device
Dell Alienware Aurora R2
Operating System/Browser (if using the web)
Windows 11 24H2 and now 25H2
v235.4.5905

Question or Issue

The Dropbox application has been intermittently hanging on my computer for at least 4 months. I use the app to take photos with my iPhone and regularly notice that

Photos from my iPhone are not appearing in my "Camera Uploads" folder on my PC.
If I create a file in the Dropbox folder, it shows the two blue arrows but makes no progress. If I right
If I right-click on the Dropbox tray icon, nothing happens.

If I start task manager and kill all the running Dropbox processes, then use Start -> Dropbox, everything is normal again for a while. Typically, I find it hung about once a day, although it's not after anything in particular that I remember doing -- usually when I go to look for a photo I took, I find it's not there, and the tray icon is non-responsive.

I'm only using 1.35% of 2.01TB so space is not a problem. My C drive, which contains the Dropbox folder in my home directory has 273GB free out of 951GB.

I believe I am running the latest version of Dropbox. There's another thread From September with a similar report and supposedly an update fixed it.

I do also have OneDrive, iCloud Drive, iCloud Photos, running on my computer and the Adobe Cloud as well, although I think they handle sync differently.

Any ideas as to how I might resolve this problem?

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Comments

Megan

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

If you quit the Dropbox desktop application entirely, is your File Explorer still slow when opening folders within the Dropbox folder itself?

You also mentioned that you happen to use a few 3rd party apps that might be monitoring, backing up or syncing your files running on your computer. Can you try to disable them one by one -and especially iCloud- and notice the behavior of Dropbox once you do? Does it improve at all?

Open iCloud Settings (search “iCloud” in the Start menu)
Open iCloud Photos settings.
Toggle Upload and Store… to Off, then select Done.
Select Delete from PC (you’ll re-enable Photos later).
Wait until iCloud shows iCloud Photos is Off.
Check if Dropbox folders now load normally.

If you don't mind, you could also try creating a new OS profile on your computer and trying to install and run the Dropbox desktop app there.

Keep us posted!

InvaderZim

Hi Megan:

My file explorer is not slow when opening files in the Dropbox folder. The problem is that I cannot even quit Dropbox because the tray icon does not respond to clicks when Dropbox hangs. I have to kill all Dropbox processes with Process Explorer, then restart the Dropbox app with the Start menu.

I have other apps syncing to my computer. I suspect everyone does. Since Dropbox only hangs intermittently, stopping other synchronization processes won't really prove anything as Dropbox might have worked even if running properly. None of the other synchronization processes hang on me -- only Dropbox. And it's only every day or two. It's been up for 36 hours and hasn't hung as of right now.

I do have a local admin, but again, running Dropbox there is not helpful as the problem is very intermittent. I brought it up here hoping that others might have also experienced this Dropbox hang, and to bring it to your attention.

I'll update this thread if I figure anything out. I do think the hangs might be related to using the Dropbox mobile app on my iPhone and I haven't done that today. If I take some photos with it tomorrow and find it hung, that might be a clue.

InvaderZim

Here's an update: it was hung again this morning. I rebooted and when Dropbox was starting, it displayed the message in the photo: "To sync this file, give DropBox permission to access it".

My wife took a photo this morning with the DropBox app on her iPhone, which was logged into our shared Dropbox account. The photo was automatically downloaded by Dropbox into the DropBox folder on my computer, and then apparently, Dropbox couldn't access the photo it downloaded, either before or after I rebooted the machine. The dialog box appeared after the reboot when the frozen Dropbox app restarted.

After clicking on the "issue', I told it to "fix the problem" using the button and it worked for 2-3 minutes before finally declaring victory.

I don't understand how Dropbox could download a file and then not be able to access the file. I do use Windows Defender and I suppose it could have locked and scanned the photo after it appeared, making Dropbox time out. That doesn't explain why Dropbox spent so long "fixing" the entire Dropbox folder, though. I have not messed with permissions on my computer.

The dropbox folder is in my home directory and is not itself inside any other folder that's backed up to the cloud. The Dropbox folder is, however, backed up by Crashplan, a true cloud backup service that backs up my entire computer. But so is OneDrive, iCloud photos, etc. It is also locally backed up by Macrium Reflect to an external DAS drive. None of these should be problems, nor do they change file/folder permissions.

I'll keep watching the DropBox app -- maybe this will finally fix the problem with the Dropbox app intermittently hanging.

Walter

Thanks for letting us know about this and please keep us in the loop if anything changes in the future @InvaderZim

InvaderZim

Had another hang overnight and none of the photos I took this morning uploaded until after I killed and restarted Dropbox. My computer was very busy overnight with a new local backup (transferred 12GB in files over USB v3.2). Before I killed the process tree, I took a screen shot in the task manager and found that the process was suspended (see image). I could not get the processes to resume by clicking on the stop icon, nor by right-clicking on the individual processes.

I think that might be an interesting data point. I can't imagine that Dropbox would have been doing anything overnight in the background. The only other processes that were suspended in a similar way was the "Windows Shell Experience Host" and "Windows Default Lock Screen".

I don't remember seeing this the other times that I had to kill and restart Dropbox, but maybe this is something added with Windows 11 24H2, which I recently installed.

Before I killed the processes, I opened the Dropbox folder. All folders were fine and speedy except the "Camera Uploads" folder, which refused to open in Windows Explorer. It was empty and Windows spun trying to display it. Restarting Dropbox fixed it.

I doubt any of this is enough to find a solution, so I'll keep monitoring. However, it may be related to my computer getting really busy overnight, running backups.

Mikey94025

I have started having this same problem as well on my Windows laptop. I disabled iCloud photos uploading as instructed and will see if the issue stops occurring. I do run PasswordSafe (pwsafe) with a database file stored in my Dropbox folder, so it synchronizes across my other PCs and phones. I have been doing this for many years and the hung Dropbox process only started in the past 2-3 months. I only notice the hung Dropbox folder when a pwsafe change made on my laptop is missing on my phone.

Megan

Hey @Mikey94025, thanks for posting here!

How often does this happen? Is it multiple times within a day, or is it inconsistent? Have you tried disabling pwsafe to check if the issue remains?

Also can you let me know more, in regards to the app's current version, and syncing status? You can find this by hovering your mouse over the little Dropbox icon in your taskbar, next to your WiFi.

Keep me posted, and we'll take it from there!

Nancy

Hey @Mikey94025, I’m giving you a nudge here in case you didn’t see Megan’s previous message.

InvaderZim

I originated this thread and can confirm that the problem still happens. Every couple of days, I’ll find the Dropbox notification area icon hung and uploads don’t appear on my desktop, but do appear on my laptop. I have to go to task manager, kill all the Dropbox processes, use the start menu to launch Dropbox, and then the icons populate.

I do have a fairly complicated setup, with iCloud Drive and Photos, and OneDrive. iCloud is always slow, but OneDrive works properly and reliably. However, I like the iPhone DropBox app better for taking photos of EBay items, or I’d just switch over.

As I mentioned in my other posts, I shut down iCloud for several days and that had no effect. Some of the Dropbox processes are using CPU time, so they’re not all hung.

I’m hoping that this will eventually get fixed, but it’s still happening.

Jay

HI @InvaderZim, at this point it might be better for the support team to look into this in more detail.
You can contact them directly via this link, and they'll be able to investigate further.