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Dropbox Smart Sync Icons Missing on Windows 10 - SOLVED
After spending almost an entire week with Dropbox tech support, uninstalling, re-installing, cleaning registries, running command scripts, MULTIPLE TIMES... We were getting nowhere. So, I did some serious research on the web looking for ways to locate and fix Windows Right-Click "Context Menus".
I found a utility called ShellExView by Nirsoft. Which pointed to another page ( fix-slow-right-click-crashes-shell-extensions ) with some more explanation on how to use it.
Apparently, the problem was that, for some strange reason, as you can see in the screenshot below, the Dropbox “ContextMenuHandler Class” was marked as “Disabled”.
I simply did a Right-Clickover it, and selected to “Enable selected items”. Then re-started Explorer using ShellExView's Ctrl+E option to restart the Windows shell. Please NOTE... Restarting the Explorer shell is an essential step. This should NOT be skipped.
And… VOILA!!! After a few seconds... ALL of the Dropbox Context Menu items magically now appear!!!
For FOLDERS, it shows like this:
And for FILES, it looks like this:
Hope this helps!
All the best,
Jacob
- Walter
Dropbox Staff
Hey JacobRusso, thanks for dropping by our Community!
I just wanted to mention that I moved your post to our Tips and Tricks area as I think many of our users will find it useful.
Thanks so much for sharing your findings and please let us know if you have anything else to add or ask.Hi Walter,
As long as others can find it, it's all good. I had added it in the Installation section since my problem started as soon as the new version came out, which had "deprecated" the Windows APP, and instead implemented the "Context Menu" options.
Now, here is the part I don't understand, and hopefully Dropbox Development will take up.
I completely uninstalled Dropbox, and used all the options that Dropbox support had provided me, including Command Line commands for clearing registry entries, for flagging "ownership" of all Dropbox directories and files, etc. Even used two (2) registry cleaners, Auslogics Registry Cleaner 9 and Advanced System Care 15 Pro. And also used the Windows repair utilities to restore health and check system files. Below are all the steps I followed.
1. Completely Uninstalled Dropbox using “IObit Uninstaller 11.3 Pro”.
2. Cleaned the registry with “Auslogics Registry Cleaner 9” .
3. Cleaned the registry and file system with “Advanced System Care 15 Pro”.
4. MANUALLY searched for and Deleted any “Dropbox” or “DropboxUpdate” entries I found.
5. Searched for and deleted any Dropbox leftovers in:
%APPDATA%
%PROGRAMFILES%
%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%
6. Opened a Command Prompt as Administrator, and used the following commands:
Dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /Restorehealth
SFC /SCANNOW
7. Rebooted my laptop.
8. After all this, I re-downloaded the Dropbox Installer from https://www.dropbox.com/downloading
9. Double-Clicked on DropboxInstaller.exe
10. Clicked “Yes” to the UAC message to allow changes to the operating system.
11. Answered the Dropbox installer setup wizard prompts.
12. Re-Booted the laptop.
I did all of these, in different orders MULTIPLE times. And yet, even with all of this, the “ContextMenuHandler Class” continued marked as “Disabled”.
Now Walter, what I would really like to know is;
a. What could possibly have caused the “ContextMenuHandler Class” to be marked as “Disabled” in the first place.
b. Why would that entire process I ran through, MULTIPLE times, NOT have corrected this?
c. What can Dropbox development or installer build teams do to prevent this in the future?
Thanks,
Jacob
- WalterThanks for the detailed response, Jacob - most appreciated!
May I reach out via email to forward your questions to one of our experts?
Let me know and we'll take it from there.
To get all the shell extensions back, in my case I simply opened preferences and changed the "show dropbox badge" setting to not show. then i applied. toggled it back to always and applied. After that for some reason not only did it turn on the badge but all the shell extensions started showing again.
Hi, I'm having the same issue with the overlay icons not appearing, and context menu also not appearing. However, the Shellexview shows that the context menu is enabled. I have tried all the other 'solutions' that I can find on this forum and nothing is working: no icons, even though the DB icon itself is on the taskbar and everything is synched. This is driving me crazy as I can no longer "view on dropbox" or quickly see if things are synched or not. I don't understand what has suddenly changed. I'm using the latest desktop app version and didn't change anything manually for it to suddenly stop showing the icons.
Any other solutions?Context menu is not disabled, but does say 'file missing'. No idea if that's relevant or not.
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