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Computer Restarted while box drive was syncing and everything disappeared

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Eamonn Carroll
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I recently installed Box Drive and was in the process of syncing all my files when my computer unexpected restarted. Now all of those files appear to be gone from the box folder on my computer (~1/2 appear on the website), I get error messages every time I try and start box drive, and a mysterious .zip folder has appeared on my desktop that contains a bunch of text files, Data Base Files, and other various file types. 

How can I recover my files and get box drive working correctly again? 

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  • Rona
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    Hi Eamonn,

    Welcome to Box Community and glad to assist!

    Please note that Box can only guarantee recovery for items deleted from box.com by using your trash (https://support.box.com/hc/en-us/articles/360044196093-Managing-Trash). Meanwhile, for your unsynced files from Box Drive or Box Sync I'm afraid we can't recover those items. 

    Also, to get Box Drive to work again please manually reset your Box Drive application. 

    To reset Box Drive on Windows

    1. Exit Box Drive (if it is running). If necessary, use Task Manager to end the Box.exe process.
    2. Ascertain whether any files exist in C:\users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\Box\Box\unsyncedFiles. These are files that have not been uploaded to Box. If these files do exist, and if you want to keep them, copy them to any location outside of C:\users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\Box\Box\ (such as your desktop). Proceeding with the steps below deletes these files.
    • You may need to show hidden folders to see \AppData.
    • Delete this folder: C:\users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\Box\Box.
    • From RegEdit, delete the registry entries under HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Box/Box to clear Box preferences.
    • Restart the Box Drive and follow the prompt to log back in.

    If you are still having trouble, please open a support ticket.

     To manually reset Box Drive on a Mac (File Provider Extension mode)

    1. Quit Box Drive if it is running.
    2. Download and open the Box Reset Tool zip file.
    3. Open the Box Reset Tool from the Downloads folder.
    4. Select Restart and then OK to confirm the restart was successful. 
    5. Open Box from your application folder and log back in. 

    Note: The Box Reset Tool will write logs of actions performed to your Desktop folder under “Box-ResetTool-logs_(<current day>)”.

    If there are any issues with the above process, follow these alternative steps to reset Box Drive.

    1. Quit Box Drive if it is running.
    2. Open a Terminal window and run the appropriate command based on your macOS version and Box Drive version:
      macOS 11.x  and macOS 14.x with any version of Box Drive
      fileproviderctl domain remove -A com.box.desktop.boxfileprovider; defaults delete com.box.desktop; rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Box/Box

      macOS 12.x and macOS 13.x with Box Drive version 2.35 and earlier
      /Applications/Box.app/Contents/MacOS/fpe/streem --remove-fpe-domain-and-archive-unsynced-content Box ; defaults delete com.box.desktop; rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Box/Box

      macOS 12.x and macOS 13.x with Box Drive 2.36 and newer
      /Applications/Box.app/Contents/MacOS/fpe/streem --remove-fpe-domain-and-preserve-unsynced-content Box ; defaults delete com.box.desktop; rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Box/Box

      This command will:

      • Archive all files that are not synced (not uploaded to Box) from ~/Library/CloudStorage/Box-Box and move it to a new folder at:
        • ~/Box-Box (Archive) (macOS 11.x)

          Note

          If you already have a "~/Box-Box (Archive)" folder from a previous manual reset, the folder will be named "~/Box-Box (Archive) 2", or if that name is already taken, "~/Box-Box (Archive) 3", and so on.

        • ~/Library/CloudStorage/Box-Box (<current day and time>) (macOS 12.x and newer)
      • Exclude from the above archive files that are “up-to-date” or synced on Box
      • Re-create the parent hierarchy of the archived files
    3. Restart Box Drive and follow the prompt to log back in.

    Hope it helps!

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