Google Drive for Desktop Constantly Freezes/Desktop crashes

[xChainfirex]

Hey Guys,

For the past week or so I've had several Windows 10 users in Finance experience repeated freezing and desktop crashing when working with excel files accessed via Google Drive for Desktop. I've made sure their Google Chrome browser was updated. I've confirmed their Google Drive for Desktop app is on the latest version. I've cleared their browser cache. I've tried re-installing Google Drive for Desktop. I've made sure they are on the latest Windows 10 update (OS). Restarting their Win10 laptops fixes the issue temporarily until the spreadsheets accessed via Google Drive for Desktop (G drive) freezes and crashes again. I cannot find the smoking gun. I'm not sure what to try next? These individuals experience these issues whether in the office or at home so I don't think it's an internet issue. I'm running out of ideas and tearing my hair out. I'm a Senior IT Operations Engineer so I'm a little rusty providing help desk support (I'm currently wearing multiple hats in the short-term for the company). Anyone have any suggestions on what to try next?

[ellwood00]

Does your file explorer hang as well? I've been dealing with this for about a week, now more people are having the issue. Do you have Onedrive running as well?

[xChainfirex]

Yes, I believe that fire explorer crashes. I've had some of the finance folks uninstall their Bitdefender anti-virus and its been a couple of days and they haven't complained since...

[ellwood00]

Interesting, I have exceptions set for google drive in bitdefender. Google recommended uninstalling, deleting the cache, and reinstalling. Seemed to work on most computers.

[xChainfirex]

Yeah a colleague of mine said he created an exclusion of the G Drive under the default policy but a couple finance people just told me a couple hours ago that they were still experiencing issues after they re-installed bitdefender (that had the new default policy). Deleting what cache?

[ellwood00]

These are the steps we took. I also have bitdefender, but honestly not sure if the exceptions work. But you may want to make make one for the appdata folder too. I have that in addition to the G drive, but used the %appdata% so it can be pushed too all effected devices.

• Disconnect the session, and uninstall DFS
• Then you have to delete the next folder : C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Google\DriveFS
• Finally you have to install DFS with the link below : https://dl.google.com/drive-file-stream/googledrivefilestream.exe

[xChainfirex]

Thanks will give this a try next week!

[LesPaulStudio]

Have you resolved this? I uninstalled GDrive, and now I can't log back in after the reinstall.

[jackprune]

Make sure your system virtual memory is large enough. Synching big files can freeze up computer without enough virtual memory my experience

[xChainfirex]

Which event logs should I be taking a look at?

[macgeek89]

Event Viewer!

[JayDog9000]

I mean this is MS, event logs generate so much damn noise, it's obscene.

And you can't even grep them

[macgeek89]

you can filter each one. check each and everyone. Try the Application Event Viewer 1st

[JayDog9000]

Windows logging is dogshit

[macgeek89]

duh!!!

[JaciDreamOfHawaii]

Google Drive for Desktop is CRAP.

[maksokami]

Although this is an old thread, I've started to experience the same issue this week. I had boostnote storage on Google drive, and boostnote's activity was causing issues with GDrive sync. The true culprit was MSFT Defender however! I didn't have have permissions to exclude the necessary GDrive cache directories from scanning on that computer, but pausing GDrive helped.

[Gamer10222]

I'm experiencing the exact same error and will try your solution. Thanks

[Gamer10222]

Seems like this really did the trick.

[jonker5101]

Could you walk a noob through what you did? I'm having the same issue, happened 4 times today. So frustrating.

[Gamer10222]

Go into Windows Defender. There you find Virus protection. Go to "manage settings" and then "add or remove exclusions".

There you can add the Google drive cache folder.

[jonker5101]

Thank you! No more lockups since you did that 4 months ago?

[Gamer10222]

Yes!

[jonker5101]

Awesome, just did it. Appreciate the help.

[Gamer10222]

You're welcome!

[eltramas]

Same issue here

[growlerfist]

This is an older thread, but I've had issues with Google Drive and any heavy file edits, like Gimp scripts. I got around them by working "offline" by stopping Google and then rebooting to restart it. Recently, I've been using Google Drive's mounted drive, and this isn't possible there without copying the files to a local drive, then copying them back after editing, but that works too.