Wednesday, February 12, 2020

OneDrive won't start on Windows 10

Recently I was helping a colleague set up OneDrive on a new Windows 10 laptop.  He installed it correctly, but it didn't open.  He restarted, uninstalled, reinstalled...still it did not open.

There were a number of items preventing it from starting:

  1. Blocked by Group Policy
  2. Blocked by Registry Key

Please see each heading below for tips to fix your OneDrive installation.  There's one more tip at the end.

Blocked by Group Policy





Steps to resolve:
  1. Right-click on the Start button, Choose Run (or Windows + R)
  2. Type "gpedit.msc", click OK
  3. Click the following items in the tree
    1. Computer Configuration
      1. Administrative Templates
        1. Windows Components
          1. OneDrive
  4. Inspect the settings in the pane to the right.  If the "Prevent usage of OneDrive for file storage" is "Enabled"  (like the screenshot above) then this is preventing you using OneDrive.
  5. Change this setting to either "Not Configured" or "Disabled"
  6. Verify that the setting applied correctly
  7. Close the "Local Group Policy Editor"
  8. Right-click on the Start button, Choose Run (or Windows + R)
  9. Type "gpupdate", click OK
  10. Wait for the command to complete

Blocked by Registry Key

  1. Right-click on the Start button, Choose Run (or Windows + R)
  2. Type "regedit", click OK
  3. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\OneDrive
  4. Make sure "DisableFileSyncNGSC" is set to "0".
    1. If the registry key doesn't exist, that is okay.  You can just skip this step.
Once you have completed both items, try to launch OneDrive.  If you're still having issues there's one final trick you can try - resetting OneDrive.

Resetting OneDrive

  1. Right-click on the Start button, Choose Run (or Windows + R)
  2. Copy this and paste it into the dialog window then press OK. "%localappdata%\Microsoft\OneDrive\onedrive.exe /reset"
  3. Manually start OneDrive from the Start Menu

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