UW-Madison Box - Known Issues

This is a list of known issues related to the Box service through UW-Madison.

Login Error: "This account has been deactivated"

If you encounter the error message "This account has been deactivated" when you login to UW-Madison Box, it indicates that your Box account is going through deactivation and has been set to inactive. An example of the error message is shown below:

Screenshot of Box Account Deactivation Error message

If you are a returning student or staff member and you are now eligible for UW-Madison services you will need to follow the instructions in the document: NetID - Activating Missing Services. Once you have activated missing services for your NetID you will be able to access your Box account.

File Downloads via 'CloudLock for Box - NP2'

In early 2021 UW-Madison Office of Cybersecurity implemented Cisco Cloudlock to monitor and alert on content uploads and anomalous access to the UW-Madison Box and SecureBox services. New files uploaded to the Box service may be scanned for content that matches criteria defined by Cybersecurity Analysts. If your file has been scanned by CloudLock you will see Download activity by the 'CloudLock for Box - NP2' application in the Access Stats history of the file. An example of this activity is shown in the image below:

Access Stats with Cloudlock access highlighted with red box

For more information about Cisco Cloudlock and why scans appear as user download activity please see the following Cisco documentation:
Cisco Cloudlock
Why Do Cloudlock Scans Appear as User Download Activity?

Contact Cybersecurity with questions related to Cloudlock access.

UW-Madison Box Login redirects to 'Medical Response Plan' folder in another person's account

The UW-Madison Box folder, "Medical Response Plan", is intentionally shared with all UW-Madison Box users from the Occupational Medicine website. Individuals are sometimes redirected to the Medical Response Plan folder at Box login. This happens when the link is listed in the browser's search bar history. In order to remove the link from the browser history you will need to do one of the following:

Why does it look like I am logging into someone else's account? The browser is keeping the link to the shared Box folder in your history, when you attempt to login to your UW-Madison Box account the browser matches on the link to the shared folder instead. The link does require that you login to UW-Madison Box in order to view the contents and this gives the impression that you are logging into another user's account. While your browser is trying to be helpful by creating shortcuts based on visited sites, it's actually causing confusion.

Box storage appears to be incorrect

It is possible that the storage reported for your UW-Madison Box account is incorrect. There is a known issue that can result in Box displaying an incorrect file count for a folder or inaccurate storage for an account. This can only be corrected by Box Support. Please contact DoIT Help Desk if you believe your storage reporting is incorrect. For a full explanation of the issue see the Box support document: Storage Usage Or File Count In My Account Is Incorrect

Note: If you have folders where the file counts change frequently you are more likely to repeatedly run into the file count issue. Box does not currently have an ETA for a fix. Until Box provides a permanent solution we will just have to work around the file count inconsistencies.

High CPU utilization on Dell workstations running Box Drive

Box recently discovered that Dell released a new patch update to their tool DBUtil driver. DBUtilRemovalTool.exe, which is a part of this update, automatically traverses a user's Box file tree on their local device (something we refer to as "runaway process"). For Box Drive users with large amounts of content on Box, the automated traversal of the tree by the Dell tool could lead to increased CPU usage, network traffic and degraded performance.

In the next Box Drive release (v2.22), Box plans to block the DBUtilRemovalTool.exe process. This will still enable users to have this process running on their machine. The only thing it blocks is the processes ability to traverse the user's Box file tree. Box has not announced a release date for Box Drive version 2.22.

Until the new version of Box Drive is available users can block DBUtilRemovalTool.exe from traversing their Box folder by taking the following steps:

  1. Quit Box Drive
  2. Using Registry Editor, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Box\Box
  3. Create a new Multi-String Value (REG_MULTI_SZ) called BannedProcessNames, if it doesn't exist
  4. Double-click on BannedProcessNames and add DBUtilRemovalTool.exe
  5. Close Registry Editor
  6. Launch Box Drive

NOTE: These steps require admin level privileges on the workstation.

Box Notifications are not being received and/or Viewers are receiving Download notifications

Box has acknowledged two different notification issues that are affecting some UW-Madison Box accounts.

  1. Some accounts are not receiving "preview" notifications even when they have those notifications enabled for their account or for a specific folder.
  2. Accounts with the "Viewer" access level should only receive notifications for Preview and Upload actions. Instead, some accounts are receiving notifications related to Upload, Download and Delete actions.

Box has a long term engineering project to improve their email notification platform and migrate it to Amazon SES. Until that work is complete they will not investigate any notification issues. The recommended work around for missing notifications is to review notifications via the Box Notification Center in the Box Web App.

For content owners who are concerned about Viewers receiving notifications for file Downloads or Deletes the recommended workaround is to adjust the folder settings to "Disable all email notifications for all collaborators". See Understanding Box Folder Settings for information on how to change folder options.

Box Drive for Windows does not display File/Folders with certain characters in the name

There is a known issue with Box Drive where it will not show or will display an error for folders or files which have special characters in the name. This is specific to Windows. Windows does not support file or folder names that contain any of the following characters:

For a complete list of known Box Drive issues please see Box support document: Miscellaneous Box Drive Error Notifications.

Box Drive for macOS (FPE Support) deletes file/folder during drag/drop operations

With the release of Box Drive v2.24 Box now supports Apple File Provider Extensions (FPE). When FPE mode is enabled the drag/drop behavior in Box Drive changes. Previously a drag/drop operation from Box Drive to a folder local to the workstation resulted in a copy, with FPE mode enabled drag/drop moves the file or folder rather than copying it. This will either move the content to Box Trash or remove the collaborator's access to the folder in Box.

Solution: If files or folders are missing after working with them in Box Drive you should first check your Box Trash. See Managing Trash. If the folder can not be found in the Trash, you should contact the Owner to verify that they still have access to the folder. The Owner can re-issue a collaborator invitation to restore your access.

FPE mode is the default for macOS 12 and there is no way to change the drag/drop behavior. macOS 11.5 users can switch between FPE mode and kernel-based mode which will restore the previous copy behavior on drag/drop. For more information see Using Box Drive on macOS File Provider Extension (FPE) mode

Box Sync has quit syncing files

There are a number of reasons why Box Sync might not be working or might have stopped working.

For more comprehensive troubleshooting, please see: Box Sync Troubleshooting

Box Sync catastrophic failures

The UW-Madison Box Service Team has encountered multiple instances where a Box Sync client attempts to upload or replace files/folders in the connected Box account with out-of-date versions of the content from the local workstation.

For more information please see our KB News Article: Box Sync Failures May Occur When Workstations are Offline or Unused for an Extended Period of Time

Java errors

Java must be enabled and at the correct version in order to run core components of UW Madison Box. If you are experiencing errors please see: My Version of Java or Flash is Outdated