Dropbox Overlay / shell extension missing!

this one's really baffling me.. I can't get the icon overlays or the shell extensions to work with windows 8. Tried doing a full uninstall/reinstall, running in compatibility mode, unlinking and relinking my computer.. no dice. I tried opening a ticket with dropbox but they basically said go away and gave me a bunch of unhelpful links.

Any ideas?

Just to be sure you installed the desktop version and aren't relying on the metro

Just to be sure you installed the desktop version and aren't relying on the metro

Yep, definitely the desktop version. Everything else works as expected, sync, etc. Just can't get the explorer integration going.

Any help here?

http://superuser.com/questions/542116/why-are-icon-overlays-from-3rdparty-apps-not-showing-up-in-the-win8-explorer

Gave that a try, no dice :(

And you've reset/rebuilt your icon cache ?

What have you summized in troubleshooting as to whether it could be a shell extension conflict?

Running largely the same setup as when I had windows 7, except it's windows 8! I just disabled Clover, but I may try running explorer in compatibility mode for 7 or something.

Turns out you can't run explorer in compatibility mode ,_, running dropbox (and its installer) as admin + compat mode didn't help.

Looking around the net it seems that quite a few folk have issues with shell extensions, overlays and Win 8.

Are you using classic shell?

Does a new user get the overlays ?

Also are you using small icons?

Tried looking at things with ShellExeView from Nirsoft?

Not using classic shell or small icons

Haven't tried making a new user

Played with the shell extensions in CCleaner, will check out shellexeview.

My main concern is definitely the shell extensions (context menu), the icons I can live without

I'm having the same problem on a new Windows 8 computer. The dropbox shell extensions worked for me initially, but at some point in the last week they stopped - both icons and context menu items are gone. I've tried reinstalling and rebooting. The shell extensions DO work on a fresh user but that's not a solution for me. I've done a lot of customizing to windows in the last week but can't imagine what I did that would break Dropbox. My other shell extensions (eg Tortoise) still work correctly.
I checked in ShellExeView and see one context and several icon overlay extensions, all look correct:
http://snag.gy/ILuJU.jpg
Any next step I can take to debug this?
Edit: I restored my UAC and ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin settings to defaults on a hunch. I've gotten it into a state where the context shell extension works right after install, but stops working after I reboot for the first time. I suspect the problem might have something to do with dropbox's integration with the windows 8 store. Which is a hurdle for another day. :/

A few years ago Windows Explorer context menus were suddenly flickering ghosts and unusable.

AutoRuns showed me that DropBox had planted TEN HOOKS - TEN OF THEM, in "Explorer",

and then I found it was even phoning home whilst Windows was starting up but BEFORE windows was ready to let me sign in.

Drop-Box technical support were useless.

I used Autoruns to disable all those hooks and normality was restored.

Then I totally removed dropbox and promised myself it was never coming back again.

I don't use dropbox.

One thing I will say though is that the newest versions of OneDrive in windows 8.1 are pretty great. I love the way it manages online files. As far as I know its the only one that you can have "free up space" on the local drive but still keep the files synced online. This is great for my laptop that currently has a pretty small ssd in it. I can create tons of files, sync them, and then let skydrive delete the local files. They still show up in windows explorer like they were on my hard drive.

Only thing I wish they would do is lower the price. Google dropped a bomb when they made 1tb for only 1.99 a month. Skydrive is $50 a year for that(still cheap). However Skydrive is good enough that I don't mind paying more.

I still haven't found a fix for this myself, as a result I've largely stopped using dropbox as a means of sharing files with anyone other than myself

Winapp2.ini have you tried running this yet from the winapp2.ini file? Or if you have could it be the cause?

[Cached Shell Extensions*]
LangSecRef=3025
Detect=HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell Extensions
Default=False
RegKey1=HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell Extensions\Cached
RegKey2=HKU\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell Extensions\Cached

I don't think I have run that entry recently, though the issue persists through reinstalls and whatnot so I don't suspect that to be the cause