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"Your account stopped syncing during an update" error on desktop app on Windows
I am on Windows 11, latest release and my Dropbox is also stuck on updating. The Dropbox version is the same. I am also receiving an error that I have not received before. I have stopped SnagIt, but ...
oh yeah and gotta love the "own name" folder, clearly whom ever thought of that did not think it through
our projects all have large fie names, once windows reaches 255 characters on the folder path funky things happen.
When dropbox went from D:\Dropbox to D:\Dropbox (Company name) it was a royal mess, we had to rename our company to W so the path was as small as possible, the space between dropbox and the (W) meant we had to rewrite all our existing scripts to support "spaces" in the path name, its funny how they think everyone is called "John Smith", now we have folders like "D:\Dropbox (W)\Cherry T. Chevapravatdumrong" (not a fake name, its a real person, google it), or better yet "D:\Dropbox (W)\Azucena María Lorena Treviño de los Ángeles" nothing automated scripts love more than super long folder names with lots of spaces and non standard characters
Now we had to rename EVERY USER to their system USERNAME because of course in true Dropbox fashion we cannot change the user folder name.
So now our folders look like: "D:\Dropbox (W)\AMLTrevino", users don't like it and all the collaboration tools now have these kinds of names, which is not ideal but at least the scripts work again.
Windows figured this out way back in windows XP, where your USERNAME is not the same as your name, because well, 95% of the names in the world are either too long or too complex for computers to handle efficiently, so then use a username.
Seems the person who thought of this at dropbox missed this class at school or has never worked an IT desk in his life, if he had he would have known Actual person names and working folders DO NOT MIX.... EVER.....
Oh and it will be lovely when the accounting lady leaves and we have to rename the accounting account to whom ever's new name comes along, we love spending our weekends editing and debugging scripts because dropbox doesn't understand the concept of usernames on working file structures.
Great job guys, well done.
5 days app still critically broken, still says "Updating Dropbox account...", so im going to go ahead and effectively assume this is a "were not fixing it" issue and moving along
Ok info for those stuck with this problem, heres how we fixed it.
The issue is windows explorer is using files that dropbox is trying to move, so until it does it will not finish
So what we did is we remade all the critical folders in the root folder of dropbox as team folders with the exact same names and permissions they had, then logged in to dropbox web to move all files from the User folder into individual Dropbox > Team folders to minimize impact of the change
Once all critical files are moved to their proper places, download process explorer from microsoft, then copy it somewhere (outside dropbox), run it, tell it to replace task manager.
Press CTRL+ALT+DEL
Select TASK MANAGER from the list
Process explorer should now open instead of the windows task manager.
Look any iteration of for Explorer.exe, right click and select Kill Process Tree (or SHIFT+DEL)
Once it closes, it "should" stay closed, if not then its a whole different problem, but if it does then:
Run dropbox from the process explorer window:
File=>RUN, then type:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Dropbox\Client\Dropbox.exe"
on the "Run" box
Dropbox will open, and start doing its thing, there will be no way to check when its done directly, the best way we found is click on File=>RUN again, go to the dropbox folder, you should see the sync icons show that its doing things, when the icon on the folders inside the main dropbox folder (where ever you put it) changes to a green checkbox or gray cloud or white/green checkbox its done. (alternatively you can use resmon.exe to check for disk activity from dropbox.exe if you know how to use it)
When its done, click again on File=>RUN, but this time type:
C:\Windows\explorer.exe
The dropbox window should pop up now, and all the changes should be done, follow the prompts on the dropbox app and proceed to fix the mess it just made.
At least now its syncing again....
Now to re-point all the broken symlinks and edit all the scripts, debug all the servers and deal with the panicked users that cant find any of their files.
Thanks dropbox! we really needed this pile of horse steaming cakes on our already over worked staff, we totally dig it!
