Dropboxcleanup.exe has stopped working - Windows 8.1

[zx80]

I get the popup error message "Dropboxcleanup.exe has stopped working" about once every hour. This has been happening in the last 12 hours so I assume there's been a recent update. I'm on 168.4.4802. The error is happening as Dropboxcleanup.exe says it can't find api-ms-win-core-heap-l2-1-0.dll.

Thanks.

[Jeremy N.2]

Hello!

I'm on W8.1, not W7 - the W7 users seem to have a problem with a different DLL.

It shoudn't matter though about what's on W7 or W8.1 itself(**) - as (as far as I can see) every other DLL that Dropbox uses is shipped inside the application ... and that includes an older version of the api-ms-win-core-heap dll (at least, assuming that's what the slightly different numbers at the rh end of the filename mean).

** asuming always that the functions which the DLL in turn invokes are supported.

[Jeremy N.2]

In the question:

Dropboxcleanup.exe has stopped working - Windows 8.1

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Apps-and-Installations/Dropboxcleanup-exe-has-stopped-working-Window...

someone erroneously said the problem was solved, early on.  It is NOT SOLVED.   Maybe the reason that Dropboxers are ignoring the thread is that they think it IS fixed.

[jukesy1992]

Come to think of it, my dropbox is set to not start when my computer starts, so why am I even receiving this message? I specifically did this because I haven't been using the program for quite some time, and I never expected anything like this to come up because if I'm asking a program to not start, then why should it start, or anything associated with it?

[Jeremy N.2]

Because it's a side-effect of the scheduled task that attempts every hour to update Dropbox if a new version is available.

[sammdesmond · Accepted solution]

Thank you for reporting this issue to us. The engineering team understands the problem and is working on getting a fix deployed. An automatic update that resolves the issues will be installed soon.

So far, we've only seen the problem affecting Windows users on Windows versions 8.1 and earlier who installed Dropbox without administrator privileges. In the meantime, here are 2 different workarounds which will silence the error message from appearing

• Option (1) Delete the problematic DropboxCleanup.exe file. This application is not needed for Dropbox on these versions of Windows and deleting it will not cause problems.
  • Open file explorer, and enter %LocalAppData%\Dropbox\Update\1.3.733.1\ in the address bar.
  • Click on the DropboxCleanup.exe and delete it
  • Demo here
• Option (2) Reinstall Dropbox with administrator privileges
  • Process is described in this document. With administrator privileges enabled, the error should stop appearing.

[Jeremy N.2]

Thank-you!  Finally someone has taken notice.

BUT, why has it taken so long to get a proper response?   Is there something that any of us users could have done, or should have done, that would have got a proper acknowledgment sooner?  This problem's been in discussion for 40 days.