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Forum Discussion
Migrating to a new PC
I have bought a new PC and migrated all the files from my old PC to my new one.
I had Dropbox on my old machine, and had synced all my local files onto it. I want to do the same on my new machine....
Dropbox has not caused any error messages, either when installing or when using it.
I attach a couple of screenshots showing File Explorer, showing part of the Dropbox folder on the new machine. They are in a folder on my Dropbox called Screenshots. The link is "C:\Users\agree\Dropbox\Screenshots\Screenshot (1).png" "C:\Users\agree\Dropbox\Screenshots\Screenshot (2).png"
Did that work for you? That link doesn't look right: I haven't shared my Dropbox files with others before.
The new machine is Windows 11, with MS Office 365.
My old machine is Windows 10, with MS Office apps bought and installed a few years ago. [I thought that I ought to update them along with the OS, and that the subscription model made sense].
I wondered whether it might be MS Office 365 that is having trouble with the file format, but I see that the same logo display appears on the .jpg files in Screenshot (2), which does not fit that theory.
Ah. I have just discovered the Public folder in my Dropbox. From the (duplicated) 'How to use the Public Folder' file there, it seems that ought to be able to create a link that would work for you, but if I right click on the Screenshot files there I don't see an option to 'Dropbox > Copy Public Link' that ought to do what I want.
What am I missing?
Great. Here they are.
... and Screenshot 2
- Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Thanks for the screenshots, Alan.
The icons on the files appear to be OneDrive icons. Can you try to disable OneDrive, to see if that helps?
Ah.
The Microsoft Support note for "What do the OneDrive icons mean?" shows the icon we see and says:-
"A brown box over your Windows Desktop icons can be caused by an issue with Windows Explorer.
To resolve the issue, restart Windows Explorer:"
I have done that. I have also Quit OneDrive (until the next system restart).
However, The problem persists - the 'brown box' icon is still visible when I use (Windows) File Explorer to look at my Dropbox folder.
How can I check whether the cause of the problem has been stopped?
Is there a known issue over Dropbox and OneDrive interfering with each other? My old machine did not have OneDrive running on it. If there is an interaction, then that might be the root cause of both my problems (i.e. file duplication, and corruption of the original file).
Thanks for your help. It's hard going, but I feel that we are making progress.
Another observation:-
The corrupted (original) files appear with the brown box icon against them in the Dropbox in File Explorer on my new machine, but with no icon on the online folder on dropbox.com. I can open the online version, but it is the local version that is corrupt so that I cannot open it.
So it does look to me as if the problem is some interaction on my new machine between Dropbox and Windows 11 and/or OneDrive.
Does that make sense?
Thanks Jay .
All of the files, local and on the website, have been duplicated [as <filename> (1)].
There are no icons of any sort on the files on the Dropbox website, and both copies of each file open OK.
Files on my PC have a brown box icon on the original of each file, and that original is corrupted (i.e Word, Acrobat or Photos report that they cannot open it). Most of the (1) copies are OK, but some of these also have the brown box icon and are corrupted [I had not noticed this hitherto - I had thought that all the (1) copies open OK: this may be a new phenomenon?].
You suggest marking a file as local: how do I do that?
- Jay
You can mark files and folders as available offline (or local) by following these steps. Let me know how it goes.
Well, we are making progress (of a sort). I left my new PC on last night, with Dropbox syncing. OneDrive had already synched.
This morning, sync was completed, and all the brown box icons have gone. All the files can be opened correctly. So the 'corrupt files' problem seems to have resolved itself.
We still have the 'file duplication' problem. I can go through my Dropbox and delete all the new copies - that seems to work OK.
But why did it happen?
Was it a conflict between the Dell Migrate Tool, which somehow disturbed the Dropbox on my new PC (and hence the synched copies online) when it was copying my files from my old PC to my new one? I installed Dropbox on the new machine whilst DMT was running, although I had no error messages at all.
Or was it a conflict with OneDrive, similarly?
What do you think?
