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safix01's avatar
safix01
Helpful | Level 6
8 years ago

DbxSvc ID 320

Hi,

In Event Manager, every second it shows " Failed to connect to the driver: -2147024894, retrying in 1000 milliseconds¨ ID:320 (DbxSvc).

Is there an update error or something else? Thank you!

 

Setting up the apps
  • Ross_S's avatar
    Ross_S
    8 years ago
    Hi all,
     
    First: Many apologies for the delay in jumping in here, I wanted to make sure I had a concrete update for you all.
     
    So, for context: What is Dbxsvc? :
     
    I've added a section to the help center article: https://www.dropbox.com/help/business/smart-sync (I say section, it's more of a note at the bottom under the driver FAQ).
     
    The file dbxsvc.exe is a file that we use to install the Smart Sync driver. Should you not be a business user, or not have Smart Sync, then this file will never start operating. It is, however, created at install for all users so if you are not a Smart Sync this file will still appear there.
     
    I see we have a number of pretty interesting, creative suggestions on how to disable, coupled with queries if it's safe to disable it. I'm of course not going to endorse a process that disables part of our software, should a feature or functionality cause user pain then we would want to know. Fixability and timeframes can vary depending on the in-depth technical nature of the problem.
    Should you decide to disable it with one of the solutions here, it will prevent the smart sync feature from working in some cases. We need the service to update the driver, as well as to establish new driver<->client connections. This is the services current functionality. Additional functionality could be added over time. My main concern around anyone disabling it is that in the future you may need this process, Smart Sync won't work correctly, you can reach out to support but this custom change you've made will be hard for us to diagnose as the root cause of whatever issue you experience.
     
     
    Why is it failing to connect / what's going wrong?:
     
    It should be failing to connect. This is by design, the actual issue you’re facing is due to the frequency we're writing to the logs. To address any concerns around error with the application, these errors are in no way indicative of a software issue and do not point to any issues with backing up you data. Because it fails to connect, Windows treats this as a trigger to write to the log. Your data is safe, this process is just used to install a driver. As covered in the above section we expect it to do what you are seeing.
     
    With that in mind, we understand that some of you do wish to see this behaviour.
     
     
    Why aren't we fixing this?:
     
    We are, we take our user feedback very seriously and we have spent many hours working on this. As fixes have many dependencies, and are just one components of a version release, I'm always reluctant to jump onto a thread and give a firm release date for a fix as these are regularly subject to change.
    You may have noticed that we took the original connection attempt frequency down from every 1 second to every minute. This was an improvement we took onboard based on the feedback you've supplied here and also via other channels. Our new release, 31.3.15, has further improved this, the process will run 3 times daily. This should reduce the errors written to the logs and not clutter the report.
     
    The new beta version is the first to include a fix:
     
  • GlenGordon's avatar
    GlenGordon
    New member | Level 2
    8 years ago

    For anyone who might care about more of the technical details of what's going on, I may be able to add a few puzzle pieces.

    I did some looking around in 

    "C:\Program Files (x86)\Dropbox\Client\driver_amd64"

    and in particular at the dbx.inf file that's used for installing dbx.sys and the dbx_svc.exe service for controlling it.

    The dbx.sys driver is a Hierarchical Storage Manager filter driver which my limited Googling reveals is related to sending and retrieving seldom used files to/from slower/offline storage.

    There's code in dbx_svc.exe to start/stop the  dbx.sys driver (FilterLoad/ FilterUnload calls).

    At least on my system, the driver is never started (perhaps it's supposed to be started conditionally) but then the dbx_svc.exe unconditionally trys to communicate with it.

     

    I now feel very comfortable stopping the dbx_svc service discussed in other answers but also changing the start type of the service to Disabled which should keep it from starting the next time I boot. (Let's hope there isn't some other Dropbox process that has the privileges to change the start type back to automatic.)

     

     

    • forcefx2's avatar
      forcefx2
      New member | Level 2
      8 years ago

      I ran a quick powershell to disable this service. 

      get-service -Name dbx | Stop-Service -NoWait |Set-Service -StartupType Disabled;get-service -Name dbx

      • ner0's avatar
        ner0
        Helpful | Level 5
        8 years ago
        forcefx2 wrote:

        I ran a quick powershell to disable this service. 

        get-service -Name dbx | Stop-Service -NoWait |Set-Service -StartupType Disabled;get-service -Name dbx

        THIS! Thanks.

         

        Also an alternative, run from an elevated cmd prompt:

        sc stop DbxSvc & sc config DbxSvc start=disabled


        To Dropbox devs reading: you are pitiful.

  • delmain's avatar
    delmain
    Helpful | Level 5
    8 years ago
    This is affecting me as well. I'm trying to diagnose a different issue that involves waiting for intermittent issues and reviewing the event log and since it's just filled with DbxSvc entries, this is proving difficult.

    Can we please at least get an update that y'all know what's going on and are trying to fix it?

    I see bn replied in the other thread about this issue (the one that was originally about it being an Error instead of Info and was necro'd for this issue), but this is definitely a new thing and needs some looking into.
    • safix01's avatar
      safix01
      Helpful | Level 6
      8 years ago

      Yes, if you don't stop this bug in the command line, you do not have a chance in the event manager to find what you need. It looks like a failed "while cycle" . I don't understand that nobody said anything about it?!

      • whatnot2's avatar
        whatnot2
        Helpful | Level 5
        8 years ago

        If you log into your DropBox account, go to settings and then tick the box for "Include me on early releases", then you can update your dropbox client to version 30.3.17, which only writes to the event log ever 30 mins..

  • philc43's avatar
    philc43
    Explorer | Level 4
    8 years ago

    Yes, I too have literally thousands of these entries swamping Event viewer.

  • Techsys's avatar
    Techsys
    New member | Level 2
    8 years ago

    Every second in the Application Log on Windows 10, I see:

     

    ----------

    Source: Dbxsvc

    Event ID: 320

    Failed to connect to the driver: -2147024894, retrying in 1000 milliseconds

    ----------

     

    I see a reference to this SAME error from a Windows 7 user (from who knows how long ago) and it STILL isn't fixed. Really?! This is ridiculous.

     

    Apparently, filling up the Application Log is of no concern to Dropbox so I guess I'll uninstall it and go without the desktop app.

     

    I'll also instruct my people to remove it from all clients in the Houston area because the desktop app is broken. I can't have everyone's logs filling up with nonsense. They'll just have to use the web interface.

     

    • Starkad's avatar
      Starkad
      New member | Level 2
      8 years ago
      I am also getting this error on 5 different machines now. It's been ongoing for weeks. Can this *PLEASE* be looked in to, Dropbox? It is severely impacting machine performance for me.
  • Joe C.13's avatar
    Joe C.13
    Helpful | Level 5
    8 years ago

    I noticed my computer was lagging very bad. So after a little bit I checked out computer management > windows logs > application. 

     

    In there I see the dropbox "dbxSvc" service creating multiple error logs per second. All giving the below error. As soon as I shut down the service, my computer is no longer laggy. Does anyone know why this is happening? I had this error a couple weeks back when I was on the beta, and have since switched to stable and still get the error. 

     

    "Failed to connect to the driver: -2147024894, retrying in 1000 milliseconds"

    • pcrockcx's avatar
      pcrockcx
      New member | Level 2
      8 years ago

      same happens to me. windows logs are filling up with these errors and the machine is wasting cpu.

      My advice .. permantly disable this service .. dropbox seems to run file without it. 

      Of course I would like to know what this service does !

      Is anyone from dropbx saying they are at least "looking at the problem" ??

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