OneDrive Perpetual Syncing Issue

Hi.
I have a friend's Dell Latitude E5550 with Win10Pro v1903 on it. Just purchased and installed O365, so now he gets 1TB online storage and wants to take advantage of that.

I am not a big OneDrive user, so not really familiar with it. I goofed up trying to setup syncing the first time, and ended up creating a new user so I could start all over again. This time, I setup OneDrive and let it do its thing. It pops up this window to sync:


(That's fine, but it sure would be nice to be able to choose which particular folders are synced.)

I right-clicked and selected "Always keep on this device".

And now, I seem to have 2 folders which are perpetually syncing:




I think this has something to do with the junctions My Music, My Pictures and My Videos, but that's just a guess. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

Edwin said:

Did you find Settings in the System Tray?

Yes, Edwin. Clicking on Settings>Backup>Manage Backup gives me the useless box above "Manage Folder Backup".

I think I figured it out.
Seems there were several *.LNK files in both Desktop and Documents. Once I removed them, the sync completed.

I'm thinking I don't like this solution. I like to put a link on the desktop for a Macrium Emergency Backup for the owner of the system, so that if things are acting up for some reason, he can double-click the link, create a backup per my instruction set, and then call me for help. If I leave that link on the desktop, then the desktop will be perpetually syncing. Why???

Strange....is there something monitoring the desktop semi-continuously? AV? Something like that? Something that would make the files appear changed to OneDrive?

Edwin said:

Now that everything is synced, can you choose folders?

No. I can either chose to stop syncing, or keep syncing. It's really stupid. I can't believe this. I must be missing something.

Looking at this page, it gives some of the errors:
Back up your Documents, Pictures, and Desktop folders with OneDrive - Office Support



And the last one is this:




Never, EVER did I get an error. I repeat, NEVER EVER. I had to guess! I had one *.lnk on the desktop to the Macrium backup xml. When I deleted that as a test, the desktop finished syncing. Why?


Edwin, if I want to backup specific folders outside the realm of what MS backup automatically, I am forced to open File Explorer windows and drag the specific folder over to the OneDrive folder. That appears to be the only way to do it.

Golden said:

Strange....is there something monitoring the desktop semi-continuously? AV? Something like that? Something that would make the files appear changed to OneDrive?

Hi. There is an online backup program on here called IDrive. It runs once a day. AV is Defender.
But once I removed the *.lnk files, the sync immediately completed. Like I said, Macrium have an option to make a shortcut on the desktop for the backup to run. When I deleted this as a test, the Desktop completed syncing. I then searched for any *.lnk files in Documents, deleted them, and syncing immediately completed. I don't understand why.