How to fix OneDrive when it gets stuck syncing forever and never finishes, or when it otherwise… (2024)

If, like me, you’ve migrated to a new Windows computer and learned the hard way that Microsoft OneDrive sometimes just gets stuck syncing/downloading/uploading files in your OneDrive folder, then hopefully this can save you the several hours of time it spent me to track it down, and then you can finally move on with your life and finish that half-eaten Cinnabon.

OneDrive can get stuck syncing files when there’s a permissions issue (of unknown origin) on any of the files in your OneDrive folder. You might run into this problem for any number of scenarios, such as:

• You point OneDrive at new location which contains a local backup of your OneDrive folder, because that should probably just work, thus saving you the hassle and bandwidth waste of re-downloading every single file from your OneDrive backup, or
• You point OneDrive at a brand-new empty folder, hoping that it will just re-download the entire freakin’ OneDrive folder without issues, or
• You are simply just trying to use OneDrive at all, under any circ*mstance.

1Open a Windows Terminal as administrator.

2 Navigate to the root of your OneDrive folder.

3Run this short and sweet command:

4Let it finish. You should get a confirmation message, specifically “Failed processing 0 files”, and then be returned to the terminal prompt, a bit like this:

5Let OneDrive finally finish syncing, now that it’s actually syncing again. That’s it. There’s no other steps. Yes, it was that simple for me. Hopefully it’s also that simple for you, and hopefully I just saved you major hand-wringing.

None of these things worked for me:

1. Restarting the computer.
2. Quitting and then restarting OneDrive.
3. Signing out of OneDrive, then signing back in.
4. Pointing OneDrive to a new folder, then letting OneDrive re-download everything.
5. Choosing myriad folders to sync or not sync.
6. Toggling the Files On-Demand feature, “Save space and download files as you use them.”
7. Reclaiming ownership over the OneDrive folder or individual folders within OneDrive.
8. Creating a different Windows user account.
9. OneDrive. It just doesn’t do, sometimes.