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Forum Discussion
Desktop app is stuck 'Starting' when it loads up and doesn't sync
I am a paying customer and very frustrated with Dropbox. I am ready to drop DropBox and look for other alternatives.
Since Friday of last week it has been trying to sync 100Gb in files and it is ta...
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Hilariously, this is more common than you think. You have a stable WiFi/ethernet connection to the web, other sites work, and yet the app isn’t connecting.Using a remote login---[This thread is now closed. If you have a similar or new question, you can ask here.]
I just got a new computer issued at work today. first thing I did at 11:15 this morning was install dropbox. It's been "starting" now for about 4 hours. I intentionally disabled selective sync for everything but a few folders with lightweight txt files in it so there's no reason for it to be taking this long. My work dropbox has about 40+ Tb worth of data in it but I'm only trying to get at a couple megs of it. What can I do to speed this up?
- Rich
Super User II
Even though you're not syncing it all, Dropbox likely still needs to build its database which will contain information about all the files in your account, and not just those that you're syncing. With 40TB of data, that process will take a while.
There's no way to speed up any of Dropbox's processes. All you can do is just let it work."There's no way to speed up any of Dropbox's processes. All you can do is just let it work."
This is the standard response to the fact that Dropbox is a buggy piece of crap. A properly implemented sync client does not take hours to start, then turns red and says that it can't access my Dropbox folder and asks for my password -- the Dropbox folder is owned by me, in a folder owned by me, and dropbox is running as me. And then after I enter my password, it says "starting..." again and probably will do so for hours and then fail. I'm a good programmer with over 50 years of experience and I don't write crap like this and I know that crap like this is not acceptable.
The reason that Dropbox is starting is because I had to restart it after it hung for hours, loading no files but with a tooltip saying that it was processing at over 6MB/sec with 17 seconds to go ... lord knows what that time means, when it still had hundreds of thousands of files to download. This is incompetent, buggy crap.
Before Dropbox hung for hours, it managed to download 40GB in a DAY. This is buggy incompetent crap.
Dropbox has said for years that performance "declines" if you have more than 300,000 files ... they have never explained why and have never fixed this. Properly designed sync clients don't have this limitation. Dropbox's "solution" is selective sync, which is no solution at all. And selective sync deletes the local files (but not all of them!). There's no way to move the files elsewhere, turn on selective sync, then move them back and sync ... Dropbox insists on reloading everything. Properly designed sync systems don't work like that.
- Walter
Dropbox Staff
Hey Jim B.45,
Sorry to hear about this - let's see into this together!
First of, are you running the latest stable version of our desktop application (47.4.74)? If not, you can find it here.
Another quick question to help with this: are you having the Dropbox Folder on your main HDD - meaning the one where your operating system resides as well?
Note that your user account must have permission to write to the desired location and that the drive must be in the correct format to avoid such errors. You can see more about this here!
As per your last query, it is indeed true that the performance of the desktop app might decline should you have more than 300,000 files. This is a soft limit and depends highly on the hardware specifications of the computer running the Dropbox application. You can always try to improve the performance of individual computers, by using selective sync to select only certain files to sync to that specific computer. In any case, you'll still be able to access all of your files from dropbox.com or other devices linked to your account.
Note: This limit is related to the number of files, not to their size. Generally speaking, Dropbox accounts with a large number of files may take longer to sync but a delay in syncing or a prolonged sync is not necessarily a sign of a problem. Usually, adjusting your bandwidth settings may increase your sync speed.
I hope this helps and please let us know what you find so we can get to the bottom of what is going on here.
- Sanchez
I'm running Dropbox under Kubuntu 14.04. I too am stuck on Starting, but with a nasty extra twist. As Dropbox runs, the resident memory it's using (I monitor it with top) gradually increases. At the moment it's up to 4.7GB. Eventually the system processes are starved for memory and the machine locks up. The trouble is that this happens before the sync has been able to get past Starting.
- Walter
Thanks for the additional info Paul - much appreciated.
Since I'd really like to help with this, I ran an internal search and found your support ticket. I have consulted with the agent handling your case and sent you some additional information on your specific case via email. Check your inbox at your earliest convenience and let us know how this goes.
Thanks!
