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Forum Discussion
currentj
2 years agoHelpful | Level 5
Dropbox freezes and crashes my file explorer.
Hello,
I am having trouble with dropbox working through my Windows file explorer. For some reason, within the last week every time I try to navigate to one of my dropbox files the file explorer cr...
Nancy
Dropbox Staff
Thanks for these screenshots! Do you happen to have any antivirus/firewall/VPN activated on your computer?
If yes, I’d like you to disable it for a little bit, and test this again. Is the Dropbox folder opening normally now?
dhannah
10 months agoHelpful | Level 5
I do have an antivirus program (Symantec Endpoint Protection); however, when I disable it as you suggested, there is no difference in how quickly I can navigate through the Dropbox folders.
Furthermore, these issues started happening about 2 months ago (that I noticed) and I haven't changed anything security wise at that time.
- Nancy10 months agoDropbox Staff
Hmm, I see. Are you still having trouble with the Windows update shown in your first screenshot?
What if you uninstall the Dropbox app, while your antivirus is still off, restart your computer, and then install the Dropbox app again?
- dhannah10 months agoHelpful | Level 5
Thanks Nancy.
Before I try that, I'd like to mention that when I am trying to save a file (either through Microsoft word or my pdf editors or any other application) my navigation through Dropbox is seamless and for some reason I'm not having those same Dropbox issues. It's only when I'm navigating through Windows Explorer.
Does that give you any additional ideas? If not, I can try what you suggested above.Thanks
- Nancy10 months agoDropbox Staff
Thanks for letting me know about that! It’s not necessary that everything related to Dropbox will be lagging, in this case. If you try the steps I sent you above though, and the issue still persists, then I’m happy to investigate this further and isolate the issue more.
- dhannah10 months agoHelpful | Level 5
I tried what you suggested. It seemed to be running smoothly after I uninstalled Dropbox, turned off antivirus, restarted computer and installed Dropbox again. But when I turned my antivirus back on after a day or two, I started having the problems again. Not sure if it was related.
Is there any way to have it working smoothly and not need to turn my antivirus off? I will need some form of antivirus on my computer.
- Nancy10 months agoDropbox Staff
In this case, I’d like you to take one extra step and whitelist Dropbox on your antivirus (since the issue seems to be related to this). Let me know if that helps at all.
- dhannah10 months agoHelpful | Level 5
I opened a ticket with my antivirus provider (Symantec) and went through a few system checks. When I turn off my antivirus using the run command, I'm still experiencing issues. We also went through all the logs in Symantec and nothing was coming up on any of the logs for trying to access Dropbox. The technician was confidence that Symantec was not causing Dropbox to slow down.
Just as a refresher, when I uninstalled Dropbox and reinstalled it, Dropbox was working smoothly for about 1 or 2 days; however, the Dropbox I'm using is for work and we have over 1.5 TB of storage on Dropbox. When I set it up, I chose to have all new files as "Online-Only" to not take up too much space on my hard drive. Over about a week, Dropbox was downloading files. Sometimes the space on my laptop was filled (not sure why because I had selected Online-Only), but eventually, after about a week, everything was Synced and up to date on the Dropbox application. Like I mentioned before, I started to have issues with the folder again after about 1 or 2 days of syncing Dropbox. So, something happened after 1 or 2 days that caused my computer to slow down and based on my conversation with the Symantec support technician, it's not related to my antivirus.
Do you have any additional suggestions that I could try? - Walter10 months agoDropbox Staff
Hey dhannah - sorry to hear you're still having issues with this.
Could you try creating a brand new OS profile on your computer and try to install and run the desktop app there?
Do you notice the same behavior there by any chance?
- dhannah10 months agoHelpful | Level 5
By "creating a brand new OS profile on your computer", do you mean creating another User in Windows 10?
And by "try to install and run the desktop app there?" do you mean try to sync using the same Dropbox profile that I'm troubleshooting with now? If that's what you mean, I don't have enough space on my drive and even if I did, it would take a few days to a week to sync everything onto the new user.
I would have to unsync everything from my current Dropbox, create a new user, then sync everything to the new user. And then I would have to try using it for a few days to see if the issue has resolved.
That would be pretty disruptive to my workflow over the next week. Is there anything else I could try? I'm just not sure what that would determine...
- Walter10 months agoDropbox Staff
This would show us if there's some sort of mis-configuration, setting, policy or permission restriction or even some 3rd party app or process that's causing issues on your original OS profile dhannah
In any case, the link I provided before leads to the most recent, stable version of the desktop app so I'd like you to check if you're already updated to that too.
Keep me posted with any updates!
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