We're making changes to the Community, so you may have received some notifications - thanks for your patience and welcome back. Learn more here.

Forum Discussion

WillHermann's avatar
WillHermann
Explorer | Level 3
5 years ago

Hundreds of background processes, new windows opened

Dropbox seems to be stuck in a loop, and opening hundreds of background processes. This consumes all my CPU capacity, then eats at my memory and disk space. See attached pics. There also seem to be w...
Desktop
Setting up the apps
Third Party Integrations
Windows
  • UnableToUse's avatar
    UnableToUse
    5 years ago

    I appear to have resolved this, by uninstalling, removing my local dropbox folder and re-installing (and allowing the subsequent download). Now I only see 4 Dropbox related processes, and system performance is normal.

    It appears that the issue was actually related to firewall changes in my network. Apparently Dropbox was spawning processes that would then wind up waiting indefinitely, instead of completing and exiting. Apparently there is no check for system load, number of child processes, etc. And the question remains as to why the Dropbox servers are now showing up on my block list.

    While this fix worked for me, if folks have a significant amount of data in their Dropbox, they may be more reluctant to try it.

Lusil's avatar
Lusil
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

Hey StuBell, thanks for reaching out to us and sorry to hear that you're having trouble uninstalling the desktop app. 

 

Since you mention that you have a lot of processes running in the background, could you follow the steps below:

  1. Open your Task Manager.
  2. Go to the Processes tab (you may need to click on "Show processes from all users" to check all processes).
  3. If you find items that refer to Dropbox or apps that you've linked to Dropbox, click on them and select End Process.
  4. Once you've done this, try following the uninstall instructions one more time.

Let me know how it goes and I'll make sure to get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks!

StuBell's avatar
StuBell
New member | Level 2
5 years ago
Hi.

Tried but there were too many and the computer was to slow to do even this.

So booted into safe mode and was then able to complete the uninstall process.

Computer is working like dream again!

Will get around to reinstalling sometime.

Thanks for getting back to me

Stay safe

Stuart

About Apps and Installations

Have a question about a Dropbox app or installation? Reach out to the Dropbox Community and get solutions, help, and advice from members.

Need more support

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!