Troubleshooting Excessive "Unable to Open Folder" Notifications – Box Support

Overview of Problem:

If you are receiving the following notifications from Box Drive, please read through this article to understand the cause and how to resolve it.

Unable to open folder. [Filename] could not be opened. Please try again.

These notifications often appear when a third-party program automatically traverses a user's Box file tree on their local device. For Box Drive users with large amounts of content on Box, the automated traversal of the tree by these third-party programs could lead to increased CPU usage, network traffic, and degraded performance. This strain on the system will be evident in Task/Activity Monitor, but will also present visually to the user in these notifications from the system.

In some cases, users may see excessive "Unable to open folder" messages while Box Drive appears to be inactive. This can happen when a process, such as a security tool, indexing application, or another application on the device, repeatedly attempts to access a Box Drive folder and the system cannot handle the volume of access attempts.

Process for Resolution:

To resolve these notifications, please work with your IT or Help Desk to exclude the following Box directories from local security scans:

MacOS	Windows
`/Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support/Box` `/Users/USERNAME/Box`	`C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Box` `C:\Users\username\Box`

For IT Admins: Identify and Block a Problematic Process on Windows

If the notifications continue after excluding the Box directories from local security scans, IT Admins can identify whether a specific process is making excessive access attempts to a Box Drive folder. If one process is responsible, it can be added to the BannedProcessNames registry value to prevent that process from accessing the Box Drive folder.

How to identify the problematic process

On the affected Windows device, open the Box Drive log folder:

C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Local\Box\Box\Logs\
Open the Box_Streem log file that corresponds to the date and time when the issue occurred. For example:

Box_Streem_1_yyyy-mm-dd.log
Check whether the same process is making repeated access attempts at the date and time the issue occurred. If a process is making excessive access attempts, you may see repeated entries similar to the following:

 yyyy-mm-dd 23:13:19.700 INFO 0x00003dac [winfs:573][onGetFileInfo] [xxx.exe] "\SampleFolder"
 yyyy-mm-dd 23:14:19.700 INFO 0x000037ec [winfs:453][onOpenFile] [xxx.exe] "\SampleFolder", shareMode: 0x7, desiredAccess: 0x100001
 yyyy-mm-dd 23:14:19.700 INFO 0x00003da8 [winfs:494][onCloseFile] [xxx.exe] "\SampleFolder"

If you have difficulty identifying the process causing this issue, please contact Box Support.

How to add the process name to the registry

Quit Box Drive.
Open Registry Editor.
Go to the following registry location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Box\Box
Create a new multi-line string value, REG_MULTI_SZ, named BannedProcessNames if it does not already exist.
Double-click BannedProcessNames and add the process name. For example:

xxx.exe
Exit Registry Editor.
Launch Box Drive.

Outcome:

Once the Box directories have been excluded from local security scans, you should no longer experience increased CPU usage, network traffic, degraded performance, or "unable to open folder" notifications.

If a specific process was identified and added to the BannedProcessNames registry value, that process should no longer be able to make excessive access attempts to the Box Drive folder.

Alternatives:

If you continue to experience any of the symptoms listed above, please submit Box Drive Logs and open a support ticket at support.box.com for further assistance.