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Kester's avatar
Kester
Collaborator | Level 8
9 years ago

Windows 7 Event Viewer Error "Failed to connect to the driver: (-2147024894)"

Onthe last few startups of my Windows 7 desktop, the EventViewer has shown the following error  and subsequent information logs as the error is corrected by Windows:   Record Number: X 95916 Log T...
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  • bn's avatar
    bn
    8 years ago

    Hi everyone!

     

    Sorry for the delay here -- I usually hang out on the client builds forum and missed this.

     

    This error is expected and harmless. We are optimistically checking for features currently in development and logging an error when we don't find them enabled. We shouldn't be logging it as an error, however, perhaps as an Informational-level event and I'll make sure we clean this up in a future release.

     

    If you're suspicious that this has been causing instability -- this hasn't really changed since last summer so it's probably not the droids you are looking for (combined with the fact that the error is indicative of things not happening, rather than things happening that are potentially destabilizing).

     

    -Ben

  • 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://help.dropbox.com/desktop-web/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:
     
thorhebegod's avatar
thorhebegod
New member | Level 2
8 years ago
Same problem here.
Autoruns (sysinternals) complains of missing dbx.sys in windows/system32/drivers.

It is missing indeed, can this be the problem?
  • glatzfront's avatar
    glatzfront
    Explorer | Level 4
    8 years ago
    thorhebegod wrote:
    Same problem here.
    Autoruns (sysinternals) complains of missing dbx.sys in windows/system32/drivers.

    It is missing indeed, can this be the problem?

    This could be it? But would still have to find what is calling this key.

     

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\dbx

     

    Unchecking it wont correct the error

    • glatzfront's avatar
      glatzfront
      Explorer | Level 4
      8 years ago
      glatzfront wrote:
      thorhebegod wrote:
      Same problem here.
      Autoruns (sysinternals) complains of missing dbx.sys in windows/system32/drivers.

      It is missing indeed, can this be the problem?

      This could be it? But would still have to find what is calling this key.

       

      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\dbx

       

      Unchecking it wont correct the error

       

      Event viewer error: EventID 320 DbxSvc (-2147024894) The system cannot find the file specified.
      Reg entry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\dbx

       

      I think the cause of this error IS NOT the Autoruns entry (dbx, Dropbox Mini-Filter Driver, File not found: system32\DRIVERS\dbx.sys).

       

      I created an empty dbx.sys file for system32\DRIVERS and after rebooting the Autoruns entry was not present but the Event viewer error was present.

      • vkapartzianis's avatar
        vkapartzianis
        Helpful | Level 6
        8 years ago

        The error is "Failed to connect to the driver". The only driver that Dropbox installs is the "Dropbox Mini-Filter Driver". This driver is not installed correctly. Creating empty files will not help in correct installation of the driver.

  • vkapartzianis's avatar
    vkapartzianis
    Helpful | Level 6
    8 years ago
    thorhebegod wrote:
    Same problem here.
    Autoruns (sysinternals) complains of missing dbx.sys in windows/system32/drivers.

    It is missing indeed, can this be the problem?

    That's it. There are three files in %windir%\System32\drivers: dbx-canary.sys, dbx-dev.sys and dbx-stable.sys. There should be only one, dbx.sys obviously.

     

    Someone messed up the installation package and they've yet to realize it. Doesn't look very professional to me.

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

      If that's all then it should not be to difficult to fix, but I wonder: why is everything working OK without the missing dbx.sys?

      • vkapartzianis's avatar
        vkapartzianis
        Helpful | Level 6
        8 years ago
        It's a file system filter driver, all operations that depend on it will fail.

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