Posted onOctober 9, 2017 (Revised January 7, 2023)
I have a 10 installations of AlwaysUp in my company that are running Dropbox as a service. Is there a way I can surface the Dropbox icon in the taskbar whilst it is running underneath AlwaysUp? I need to make some preference changes and of course when configuring Dropbox to run underneath AlwaysUp we can’t see the task tray icon!
Hi Matt. When Dropbox is running as a windows service with AlwaysUp, you won’t see its familiar task tray icon () on your desktop. This is because Dropbox is operating in the background, on the isolated Session 0. And because Session 0 does not contain a task bar, you won’t see the tray icon even if if you switch to Session 0.
Fortunately you have a couple of options to reveal the tray icon and gain access to the Preferences window:
1. Stop Dropbox in AlwaysUp and start it normally
The first option is to simply stop Dropbox under AlwaysUp and fire it up as you would normally on your desktop (by double-clicking on its desktop icon).
Once you are done making changes to your settings, exit Dropbox from the tray icon and start it as a service under AlwaysUp again (Application > Start “Dropbox”).
2. Restart Dropbox on your desktop from AlwaysUp
For the second option, you can stop Dropbox running in the background (Session 0) and restart it on your desktop/session — all from AlwaysUp. To do this, highlight the entry in AlwaysUp and select Application > Restart “Dropbox” in this session:
In a few seconds, Dropbox will magically appear on your desktop. Click on the tray icon and then click the gear image in the upper right to summon the Preferences window:
When you are done making changes, switch back to AlwaysUp and choose Application > Restart “Dropbox” from the menu. This will stop Dropbox on your desktop and return it to Session 0 (the home for all windows services).
Not only for Dropbox…
Note that both options above will work for almost any program that displays a tray icon or window! We recommend the same procedures when managing common GUI applications as services, including OneDrive, VirtualBox, Box Sync and Outlook 2010.
If you have a question about Windows Services, 24×7 operation, or any of our products, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We’ll do our best to provide a timely and informative answer!
If you are running Google Drive as a windows service with AlwaysUp, beware: Google Drive is going away. The folks in Mountain View broke the news in a recent G Suite update, stating:
Google Drive will no longer be supported starting on December 11th, 2017, and it will shut down completely on March 12th, 2018.
I’m using Google Drive. What should I do?
Google isn’t leaving its users stranded. Their new Backup and Sync application is an excellent (and free) replacement for Google Drive. Just uninstall the old program, install and configure the new application and you will be good to go!
But if your goal is quickly and easily access your files in Drive from your PC, then you should also consider Drive File Stream. This new application — which will be publicly available on September 26 2017 — lists your files in Google Drive as a special folder on your PC and allows you to grab those files on demand. Drive File Stream uses less disk space than Backup and Sync, is less taxing of your network bandwidth and also boasts offline access. However, whereas Backup and Sync will happily copy files from whatever folders you designate, Drive File Stream only synchronizes the files explicitly placed in its “My Drive” folder. This may be an issue if the files you want to share span many folders across your PC. Check out this page comparing the similar products to find out which one is right for you.
One important note: Drive File Stream is not supported on Windows Server editions. This is a curious restriction for a product aimed at “G Suite Enterprise, Business and Education customers” — a group that routinely runs server products. Backup and Sync has no such limitation.
Can I run Backup and Sync as a Windows Service with AlwaysUp?
Specify it in the Application field on the General tab:
Here is a screenshot of Backup and Sync running with AlwaysUp on Windows Server 2016:
So far so good!
We will continue to test the Backup and Sync service for a couple more weeks and write up a step-by-step “setup guide” to help future customers. A tutorial for Drive File Stream will follow once that software has been officially released (near the end of 2017).
Finally, good luck migrating from Google Drive to Backup and Sync. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you encounter trouble running Backup and Sync as a Windows Service!
Posted onAugust 11, 2017 (Revised January 7, 2023)
AlwaysUp is designed to run Dropbox 24/7 — starting it when your PC boots and keeping your files up to date all the time despite failures or other unexpected interruptions. You don’t even need to log on!
But to gain those benefits, AlwaysUp must launch Dropbox in the background as a Windows Service. In that situation, described in our tutorial showing how to setup Dropbox as a Windows Service, Dropbox’s familiar “box” icon won’t appear on your taskbar. You won’t see the informative icon overlays beside the files and folders being synchronized either. And without those visual hints, how do you know that your important files and folders are being copied to and from the cloud?
Perform this easy 4-step test to prove that your important files are protected:
Start Dropbox in AlwaysUp
From AlwaysUp, select “Start Dropbox” from the “Application” menu:
Your service should transition to the Running state after a few seconds. Clicking on the green circle should reveal details of the running process:
Respond to that annoying email you’ve been trying to forget.
Dropbox should be ready and waiting when you return.
Create a new file in your Dropbox folder
Open your Dropbox folder in Windows Explorer. Right-click in the files area (on the right), select New > Text Document and give the file a suitable name:
We called our file “DropboxTest.txt”:
Login to Dropbox online and confirm that the new file is there
Sign in to your Dropbox account online and browse to your files. The new text file should be listed, as it was for us:
If you don’t see the new file, do a few more stretches and try again. Sometimes Dropbox can be a bit slow…
What should I do if my file didn’t show up?
If your new file wasn’t listed online, something is definitely wrong with your setup. We’re here to help! Please get in touch so that we can get you going ASAP.
A customer looking to run OneDrive as a Windows Service with AlwaysUp recently contacted our support team for help. Even though he had diligently followed our step-by-step tutorial, his files were not being synchronized as intended. OneDrive refused to refused to work as a service!
After confirming that his files were not being copied, our support team launched OneDrive “in this session” — to see the normal tray icon and check if an error was being reported. We were greeted by this puzzling error message:
So it seems that OneDrive doesn’t like to be run with admin rights. And the customer’s account was a member of the Administrators group — which is recommended for smooth operation as a Windows Service with AlwaysUp.
UAC enables an administrator to run OneDrive normally
But why does OneDrive work at all in the customer’s admin account? Why doesn’t the software complain when he starts OneDrive normally on his desktop?
The answer lies with Microsoft’s User Account Control (UAC) security feature. By default, applications started interactively are run with lower, non-admin privileges. This happens for all accounts — even for administrators. OneDrive seems to require that lower privilege context to do its work. Indeed, in this OneDrive desktop FAQ, Microsoft confirms that UAC is what enables OneDrive to be started by an administrator. If we removed UAC from the equation (by by right-clicking on OneDrive.exe and selecting “Run as administrator”) we were able to reproduce the error straightaway.
But while UAC restricts rights for the desktop user, UAC is not in play when running in the context of a windows service. Services are always run with the highest privileges. We must find a way for our customer to start OneDrive with reduced rights to avoid the error.
How to launch OneDrive with reduced rights from AlwaysUp
Our new Run with Restricted Rights command-line utility comes to the rescue. Here are the steps we performed to get the customer up and running:
where [USER-NAME] is the name of your Windows account.
Save your settings.
With this new setup, AlwaysUp will start RunWithRestrictedRights.exe, which will launch OneDrive with diminished permissions. You should not see the “full administrator rights” error anymore.
Note that we plan to add the capability to run an application with diminished rights directly from AlwaysUp. That feature will probably included in AlwaysUp version 10.3, which should released to all customers in September/October.
AlwaysUp is designed to run OneDrive all the time — starting it when your PC boots and keeping synchronization going 24×7 despite failures or other unexpected interruptions. You don’t even need to log on!
But to gain those benefits, AlwaysUp must launch OneDrive in the background as a Windows Service. In that situation, described in our tutorial showing how to setup OneDrive as a Windows Service, OneDrive’s usual “cloud” icon won’t appear on your taskbar. You won’t see the informative icon overlays beside the files and folders being synchronized either. And without those visual elements, how do you know that your important files and folders are being copied to and from the cloud?
Perform this easy 4-step test to prove that your files are protected:
Start OneDrive in AlwaysUp
From AlwaysUp, select “Start OneDrive” from the “Application” menu:
Your service should transition to Running after a few seconds. Clicking on the green circle should reveal details of the running process:
OneDrive can take a while to initialize itself — especially if it has a long list of files and folders to synchronize. This is a good opportunity for you to:
Respond to that annoying email you’ve been trying to forget.
OneDrive should be ready and waiting when you return.
Create a new file in your OneDrive folder
Open your OneDrive folder in Windows Explorer. Right-click in the files area (on the right), select New > Text Document and give the file a suitable name:
We called our file “TestSync.txt”:
Login to OneDrive online and confirm that the new file is there
Sign in to your OneDrive account and browse to your files. The new text file should be listed, as it was for us:
If you don’t see the new file, do a few more stretches and try again. Sometimes OneDrive can be a bit slow…
What should I do if my file didn’t show up?
If your new file wasn’t listed online, something is definitely wrong with your setup. We’re here to help! Please get in touch so that we can get you going ASAP.
(888) 881-CORE
I have a 10 installations of AlwaysUp in my company that are running Dropbox as a service. Is there a way I can surface the Dropbox icon in the taskbar whilst it is running underneath AlwaysUp? I need to make some preference changes and of course when configuring Dropbox to run underneath AlwaysUp we can’t see the task tray icon!
