My Box Files have all disappeared AGAIN!

Hi, this is the 2nd time in the past couple of weeks that this has happened. My previous request for support (https://support.box.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/14391658946963-All-my-BOX-files-have-disappeared-?page=1) was not helpful and my questions did not get answered, so I am trying once more to get help on this.

This time I've done my best to document exactly what happens.

I have the latest version of BOX installed. It is the free version. All was working fine yesterday, but this morning I did a fresh reboot of my windows laptop.

After rebooting, BOX started and gave me the message:

Box Drive has encountered an issue
There are open files that are preventing Box Drive from starting.
Please close all applications and restart Box Drive. If the Problem persists please contact BOX Support to further troubleshoot the issue.

(and yet, this is a completely fresh reboot, and I have not opened any files on Box Drive!)

After I close the above error message, I then get the following message:

Box Drive is about to quit
There may be open files that Box Drive cannot detect.
To prevent my loss of work, please ensue that any Box files
are saved and closed before you quit.

(since I have nothing open, I simply OKed this error message).

Box Drive then stops.

I then went to my Box Drive Folder, and checked it, and it was once more empty. All my files had gone/disappeared/vanished.

As you can see, the only thing I have in my Box Drive is one empty folder with no content..

LAST TIME I checked a backup I had taken of my entire C Drive, and my Box Drive Files were NOT there either, I got the following error message:

LAST TIME this happened, after several reboots Box Drive finally started correctly, and as if by magic, all my files were once more, exactly where they were supposed to be in Box Drive. I don't believe that they were downloaded from the cloud again though, as that happened too quickly, it was as if they had never disappeared!

My questions are:

1. Why wont Box Drive open? 2. What happens to all my Box Drive files when Box Drive doesn't open? - I mean, are they really GONE from my hard drive? 3. Why didn't the backup I took copy the files from Box Drive to my external disk???

If accessing my Box Drive files requires Box to be running then this really doesn't work for me as they SHOULD be 100% present for me regardless of whether or not Box Drive is buggy and crashing!

Mango

March 05, 2023 17:15

OK.. Today, after the umpteenth reboot, Box Drive finally started correctly and as if by magic all my files were back in their Box Drive folders.. I'd really appreciate an explanation of what's happening here, and an answer to my 3 questions above. Thank you.

Mark Heidecker

March 05, 2023 17:59

It's interesting how they say "Join +1M users......." yet this community forum is a barren landscape.

March 05, 2023 19:24

they should provide direct support via email in addition to having the forum.. offering a service like this but making it virtually impossible to contact them directly is a huge red flag for me (that's in addition to the obvious red flags mentioned above).. This is what all the bigger companies do, like facebook and google, they make direct contact as difficult as they can.. but box drive isn't big enough to be doing that.. if they want to grow, they need to offer better support..

Aira

March 09, 2023 03:43

Hi there,

Welcome to the Box Community!

I do apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused you.

In rare instances Box Drive fails to launch. Manually resetting Box Drive can often resolve this. You may check this article :https://support.box.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043697494-Using-Box-Drive-Basics

There are times that you won't see file on the app due to Internet connection issue or OS version compatibility.

If you encounter this issue again, please try to check the following:

Do you have Outlook open when trying to launch Box Drive? If so, can you close out of Outlook, launch Box Drive, then launch Outlook?
The same thing applies for Excel

Thanks!

March 09, 2023 18:32
Edited

Hi Aira, I definitely don't have Outlook running, nor Excel.. I don't even have MS Office installed, so it is not those that are causing the issues..

You wrote:

"There are times that you won't see file on the app due to Internet connection issue or OS version compatibility. "

So why cant the files be seen? Why am I unable to access them if Box Drive doesn't start properly?? That has to be a bug, as if they are on my drive, then surely they should always be accessible to me regardless of Box's status?

thanks

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