Another knock on OneDrive: Corrupt install, slows laptop

WizardOfBoz · 11 Aug 2020

Installed Win10 Pro. Dual boot with Ubuntu, 1 Tb drive, Lenovo W541. Two things
1) File explorer was corrupted - certain names ( e.g. "Documents") pointed to wrong directory (in OneDrive)
2) The computer was incredibly slow. The 4840mx chip is not state of the art, but it shouldn't suck.

With help from Shawn Brink's bat files, and his explanation, I figured out that somehow the install had conflated normal local folders with those on OneDrive. Steps to rectify:
1) Shut down OneDrive
2) Control Panel used to uninstall OneDrive
3) Shawn's bat files used to check all my file pointer locations to ensure that they pointed to

c:\user\myname\folder

and not

c:\user\myname\onedrive\folder

4) Once File explorer pointed to the correct places, I deleted the files in c:\user\myname\onedrive, and the folder itself.

I believe that the issue was installing Windows and turning OneDrive on too early (or at all).

To give you an idea, the Passmark eval on my CPU went from 4850 or so to 7258. Now things run more like I expected.

Probably will not use OneDrive again. Something that slows your computer down, and takes hours to fix, is by definition a virus.

dalchina · 12 Aug 2020

It is indeed interesting that several (recent) threads indicate some experience significant issues with using Onedrive. I eliminated it long ago, and, as seems all too commonly the case, think 3rd party options can be more robust and reliable. In one recent case, it seemed Onedrive simply would not synchronise for a very long time- for whatever reason- preventing thumbnails being displayed as normal.