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Forum Discussion
Desktop App Severely Affecting System Performance
I love Dropbox. I can't say I've messed around with a bunch of different cloud storage services, but Dropbox has been more or less great for me for years. However, recently the desktop application ha...
This sounds exactly like my issue. Things are slow because Dropbox is totally thrashing the registry. Right-clicking on the desktop (or opening the Start Menu) requires checking a few dozen registry entries, but Dropbox's indexing causes a kind of denial-of-service attack on the Windows registry.
Dropbox support was pretty cool when we started talking offline and we were able to track it down to Windows being the real troublemaker. When Dropbox checks a file during re-sync, it sends out a request to Windows to update the little icon in the corner (green checkmark, etc.).
Historically, this was fine. Maybe(?) after the latest Windows 10 update (that's my guess; the Dropbox team reported they haven't been able to reproduce the behavior), that exact same "hey, Windows, update that file's icon" request now involves checking the registry for four values, which ends up closer to thirty actual registry operations. Who knows why. Windows doesn't seem to cache the values, so it repeats the check for every file. And Dropbox seems to update the whole folder hierarchy's icons each time (despite alleged "deduplicating logic"), so you end up with something close to 150 registry calls per file in your Dropbox!
No known workaround.
All we'd need is an "I don't want icon overlays" option in Dropbox and this problem would disappear. Alternatively: Windows could fix its broken code.
This sounds exactly like my issue. Things are slow because Dropbox is totally thrashing the registry. Right-clicking on the desktop (or opening the Start Menu) requires checking a few dozen registry entries, but Dropbox's indexing causes a kind of denial-of-service attack on the Windows registry.
Dropbox support was pretty cool when we started talking offline and we were able to track it down to Windows being the real troublemaker. When Dropbox checks a file during re-sync, it sends out a request to Windows to update the little icon in the corner (green checkmark, etc.).
Historically, this was fine. Maybe(?) after the latest Windows 10 update (that's my guess; the Dropbox team reported they haven't been able to reproduce the behavior), that exact same "hey, Windows, update that file's icon" request now involves checking the registry for four values, which ends up closer to thirty actual registry operations. Who knows why. Windows doesn't seem to cache the values, so it repeats the check for every file. And Dropbox seems to update the whole folder hierarchy's icons each time (despite alleged "deduplicating logic"), so you end up with something close to 150 registry calls per file in your Dropbox!
No known workaround.
All we'd need is an "I don't want icon overlays" option in Dropbox and this problem would disappear. Alternatively: Windows could fix its broken code.
This is really not a fix.
Can someone explain what the heck is going on??? I am having the same issue. Whenever I try to access files through the Dropbox Windows Client using the File Explorer, it will literally take 30 seconds every time I try to open a folder or a file.
- Lusil
Dropbox Staff
Hey meguia, thanks for nudging us on this thread.
I'd be more than happy to look into this with you if you'd like.
If you've already had a look at the article I mention above, could you let me know what you see when you hover over the Dropbox icon that's next to your computer's clock?
Looking forward to hearing back from you!
I did - and while on live chat with Pierce from Dropbox we had checked CPU usage and that was not a factor. After trying everything the first layer of help from Dropbox provided, including links like these...
1) I deleted dropbox, rebooted and re-installed.
2) I deleted onedrive, and checked to see how Dropbox was behaving. It was now behaving fine.
3) I rebooted and re-installed onedrive.
All programs seem to be running fine.
This issue was previously fixed by deleting folders from Registration Entries. From reading other threads, including this one, Dropbox knows it has a Registration Entries problem with Windows. Please fix that, because it will keep happening in the future. Unless that bug is actually Microsoft trying to kill dropbox because their OneDrive program sucks. I can't help you there.
- Lusil
Thanks for letting me know, and great work with the troubleshooting!
Since you're investigating this with a member of our team, I'd recommend continuing with them, as they'd be able to have a better look into this for you, using out internal tools.
I've made sure pass your comments along to them, so as soon as they have additional information on the matter, they'll get back to you via email.
In the meantime, could you also check if you have any pending updates on your computer's OS?
Thanks again!
