You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Forum Discussion
My computer's experiencing a lot of high CPU usage
I have a fresh install of Windows 10 on a 32Gb i7 laptop. Dropbox was installed a week ago with most files set to online only, and the initial sync completed within a few hours. Now, Dropbox frequently uses 30% CPU, even when syncing is paused. Of my 73,000 files, 50,000 of those are marked as symlinks. I don't know why that is, it was Dropbox that created the files during it's initial sync. What's going on here Dropbox Support? I see lots of posts about high CPU usage. I'm paying for this service, and it's not very good at the moment. Dropbox used to be really good, but I'm going to have to switch to an alternative if this can't be resolved.
- Lusil
Dropbox Staff
Hi there RichJ, thanks for checking in with us about this.
In general, you can have a look at this article for some info on how symlinks work with the Dropbox folder, but you can also check out this link for some suggestions on how to tackle high CPU usage issues.
If you're still having trouble with it though, don't hesitate to give us another nudge, and we'll make sure to get back to you as soon as possible. Cheers!
Hi Lusil,
Thanks for getting back to me.
Regarding the point in the high CPU usage article:
1. I have around 70,000 files, the majority of which are not stored locally
2. The high CPU usage happens when Dropbox sync is paused, so this is not the cause
3. Same answer as point 2.
4. See point 1
5. I'm not using a NAS drive, it's a local SSD drive
6. Same answer as point 2.Regarding symlinks, I don't use them. However, around 50,000 files in my Dropbox folder are flagged up as symlinks when I run dir c:\dropbox /a:l /s
Dropbox created these files when it performed it's initial file sync, so it must be Dropbox that set the symlink flag on each file. Has Dropbox set these files up as symlinks because they are not stored locally?
What's frustrating here is that this is a fresh installation of Windows 10, on a decent spec laptop, with all updates applied. Dropbox has been installed and left to do it's sync on around 70,000 files, which is well below the 300,000 stated as the point where performance can start to decline. Most files are stored online. Dropbox is hogging CPU. Why?
- Walter
Hi RichJ; sorry to jump in here.
Can you maybe try the following steps and let us know if they improved matters for you at all?
1. Make sure the Dropbox desktop application is running
2. Click on the Dropbox icon in the system tray and then click your profile picture or initials
3. Select 'Preferences'
4. Click on the 'Account' tab, and then click in the window under the tab (just anywhere will do)
5. Hold down the 'alt+H' keys
6. Click on the 'Fix Hardlinks' button
7. You may be prompted for your a username and password, this is your computer login credentials, not your Dropbox account ones
8. Please wait about ten minutes to see if Dropbox resumes syncing.
If the above steps don’t resolve your issue, please repeat steps 1 to 5, but at step 6, this time click on the “Fix Permissions” button.
Please note that if you use “Fix Permissions” syncing will start back over. At that point, let it sync until it shows Up to date and let us know if you're still noticing high CPU usage or any other discrepancy.
Thanks a bunch and have a lovely weekend Rich!
