How to stop Dropbox from taking over my USB drives

[zogthegreat]

Hi everyone!

 

So I have a clean install of Windows 10 and bleeping Dropbox keeps trying to use any USB device that I plug in. I have selected "Open folder to view files (File Explorer)" but Dropbox doesn't seem to care what I want, (side note, this behavior makes me think that Dropbox now owned by MicroSith).

 

Any suggestion on how get get this fixed?

 

Thanks!

 

zog

[zogthegreat]

Yes, I find it "less bad" than One Drive.

[Kilrah]

In settings -> Devices -> AutoPlay make sure nothing has Dropbox selected.

[Mark Kaine]

On 8/27/2021 at 7:00 PM, zogthegreat said:

this behavior makes me think that Dropbox now owned by MicroSith

The wiki suspiciously avoids to name an "owner" super hard,  which makes me think its at least a possibility. 

 

"Dropbox, Inc. Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc."

 

"Operated", "founder', "blah blah blah" ,no direct mention of an "owner" whatsoever. 

 

 

[zogthegreat]

On 8/27/2021 at 2:24 PM, Kilrah said:

In settings -> Devices -> AutoPlay make sure nothing has Dropbox selected.

(chuckle) I've gone through the list looking for anything related to Dropbox and I can't find anything. The way the try to force their service on you is why I have suspicion that they are part of MicroSith. 

[Kilrah]

Why would you think so? 

They're just using all the tricks they can through standard OS features to push you to use their stuff more, like most companies... and it's been annoying for years, also on android.

 

 

[zogthegreat]

On 8/29/2021 at 11:21 AM, Kilrah said:

Why would you think so? 

They're just using all the tricks they can through standard OS features to push you to use their stuff more, like most companies... and it's been annoying for years, also on android.

 

 

What's interesting is that MS "charges" for their OS, and they cram it full of bloatware and tracking for marketing. MacOS is free and no advertising or tracking.

 

And of course, there's Linux, (chose your distro), also free and no bloatware or tracking.

 

Make ya go WTF? 

[Kilrah]

13 hours ago, zogthegreat said:

MacOS is free and no advertising or tracking.

Mac OS isn't free, it doesn't have a price tag because it's never sold separately and it's the whole goal of making you say "it's free", but you still pay for it when you buy a mac (and have no choice not to).

[zogthegreat]

Err, not exactly. I run Mac OS X on my Dell Latitude laptop as a "Hackintosh". Since OSX is based on BSD Linux, it's open source and Apple is required to release the source code. From there you can compile OSX on your own. Once you have OSX installed, you can download OSX and system updates free of charge.

[beninu]

Many ask this question on the internet - I did myself, probably because I was too lazy to go through settings menu.

Many also give a ridiculously stupid reply - most often the Dropbox support staff, saying something in the line of opting out from "photo import", which has NOTHING to do with the problem - like - at all! But Dropbox supporters are notoriously stupid or stoned. They are like the cartoon supporter that always start treating people like they are idiots asking them: "What happens if you restart windows?" as if this is something you wouldn't try BEFORE contacting support.

 

But, luckyly there IS help. The fact is, that there is BOTH a per drive AND a per installation option to backup drives. The per drive is what you opt out from when checking "Don't ask again", when asked to backup a newly inserted external device. It is very vague (and bad fraseologi from Dropbox) but it actually only means not to ask again for this PARTICULAR drive. And the horrible way it makes sure not to ask again is to litter your drive with a binary file, which can be an outright disaster if you have a boot image on the drive that needs to be exact to the last bit to work correctly. There are so many other ways Dropbox could have solved this without polluting the drive by writing unwelcome files to the root folder of the drive, like, for instance, save the unique HW identifier for the drive in an internal (or cloud) database so it would look up the DB to see if you have already opted out of automatic backup for this external drive. But no - they went for the amateur/noob programmers solution - alas!

 

Would you instead want it not to ask for EVERY newly connected drive you do set that in options in this menu:

This box is usually ticked by default. Untick the box to disable the question to backup newly connected external drives.

Hope this helps.
 

 

 

[zogthegreat]

Hi @beninu

Thanks for the reply and the information. Dropbox really tries to hide shutting this feature off!