I have more or less fixed my problem, in that it hasn’t recurred for several months now. One problem though is that im not certain which one or combination of the things I did actually resolved the issue.
First, I deleted everything that had anything to do with OneDrive, including unrelated items. If the INF or log files even had the word OneDrive or even SkyDrive (the old old name) I uninstalled it, deleted it, and cleaned the registry of it. This included
iCloud, btw. I detest that not only do Apple and Microsoft not play well together, it appears they take their war onto the battlefield of my PC. A good argument for linux, imo.
Next, I think that Microsoft actually has TWO OneDrive sync clients. One is represented by a white cloud icon, the other by a blue cloud icon. Microsoft is very evasive about this, and makes no refrrence to it, as far as I can tell. You want the one with
the BLUE cloud icon. It does a much better job of being controllable and actually posting status, at least somewhat accurately. Plus it doesn’t disappear from the system tray the way the white one always did. I also noticed that the white one was not being
updated by updates, and I always had to manually update and re-install it every time it failed, which was every three or four “somethings” (restarts? run days? phases of the moon?)
I can’t tell you how/where to find the blue one. Just that I combed through the MS archives and happened upon it. I also can’t get it to report a version or build. MS is protecting me from myself again.
I also manually set it up. I still have the old white one, and it has discrepancies between what it reports and what the blue one does. But the blue one agrees more closely with the OneDrive app.
And that’s a good point. Every so often, make sure you are comparing your OneDrive contents as reported by all the various access methods, and correct any small issues before they get out of hand.
A couple other anomalies I experience are that Microsoft Office 365 frequently complains that I’m not on the Internet and so cannot verify my credentials or obtain access to OneDrive. But of course I am connected, and I notice that the OneDrive sync client
does not suffer this same brain deadness. So if I save or open a file locally to or from a directory that is synced, then the sync client handles it for me.
A second anomaly is the Microsoft also doesn’t like connections through a VPN. It routinely fails to connect when my VPN is up. That’s a little too big brotherish for me as well. But if you’re running a VPN (and you should be for your own privacy and protection),
then you might have to bring it down to access Microsoft services successfully. Another good reason to move away from MS in general.
Years ago, I had a MS tool called “synctoy.” It appears that OneDrive is built from this old technology. Synctoy was a more general version of the sync client Microsoft is using for OneDrive, and it could sync any two or more directories on any two or more
computers as long as the proper permissions and connections were in place. But it was buggy - very buggy, which accounts for the use of the name “toy” I guess. Just sayin’ - this is old technology, and Microsoft would be well-advised IMO, to come up with domething
new.