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Forum Discussion
My Documents folder has been moved to Dropbox somehow even after uninstalling it. Can you help?
Original objective seemed trivial. Wanted to download a copy of my old files from the Dropbox cloud down to a different computer. After several attempts and a lot of time, I was unable to do that from the browser. (That included posting here. No useful answer but much lower expectations now.) So I finally gave up on that approach and downloaded the standalone version. That worked as I remembered it, allowing me to copy the files out of the Dropbox directory.
Having accomplished my objective, I decided to uninstall Dropbox. No error messages during installation or uninstallation. However, after it was uninstalled I discovered that my computer was extremely seriously messed up. Now the Documents folder has been moved down into a subdirectory of Dropbox. The new directory structure looks like this:
file:///C:/Users/<my user name>/Dropbox/My%20PC%20(<my computer id>)/Documents/TargetDays.html
That "Dropbox" in the middle is screwing everything up. Massively. Apparently this was created in the installation process and left behind after it was uninstalled. I want to use much stronger language, but what I can definitely say is that I will NEVER trust Dropbox again. I have a couple of theories about what went wrong, but I don't care much about figuring out such incompetence.
- Rich
Super User II
shanen0 wrote:
Apparently this was created in the installation process ... but I don't care much about figuring out such incompetence.
You enabled the computer backup feature during the installation process. Reinstall Dropbox, allow everything to sync, then go into Dropbox Options and you can disable the feature.
My goodness, that is a gawdawful solution and I certainly had no intention of creating such a gawdawful mess. I never would have enabled such a feature on a computer with such a large disk capacity and there should have been a sanity check warning me not to do it. Did your marketing geniuses think this would encourage some people to sign up after the suckers were trapped? With hindsight it does explain some of the peculiarities I noticed at the time, but it actually makes my opinion of Dropbox worse, so I cannot count it as a good solution. I actually think the idea was sort of good, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions, eh?
I'm actually afraid to try to fix it that way. The closest thing to a proper solution would be a specialized tool to fix the broken state you created, but I guess I have no free choice but to try to do it your way. It would take too long to try to figure out what else you mangled without asking me...
The installer itself was hidden by the restructured file system, making it that much harder to attempt to fix the horrendous mess. How can my opinion of Dropbox become worse? Only if my next attempts to fix the mess make it worse. Knocking on wood. HARD.
- Jay
Dropbox Staff
Hi shanen0, thanks for messaging the Community!
We appreciate the feedback about the automatic computer update.
As Rich said, that is one way to disable it, another would be to remove the device from the devices page on your account, if you don’t have the app installed.
Once it’s disabled, you can move the folders back to their original location.
If you require any further assistance, please let me know!
Gosh, but that's a terrible attempt at a "solution". Do you have any idea how complicated file systems have become? You really should. It's kind of important to the business of Dropbox.
I do not know what changes your Dropbox installer made in the file system of this computer. Even if I knew exactly what the original structure was (and I only have vague ideas there), then it would take lots of searching to find all the contingent and symbolic links. Obviously the Dropbox installer managed to mangle things intelligently enough that the machine is still bootable, but the Dropbox uninstaller did NOT manage to unmangle the mess. Your advice comes down to "Fix it yourself", which is.... Words fail me.
So now you tell me to put things back the way they were? That's some gall you got there.
