Hi everyone,
i have Windows 11 installed and everything worked fine.
But suddenly my icloud drive stopped working.
It says "initializing" but nothing is happening.
I have already tried uninstalling and installing it, with no effect.
It works fine on iphone and browser.
Thanks!
Windows, Windows 10
I once was reading this thread, since I got the same problem. Despite disabling iCloud which then deletes all files, I tried all hints on this thread. A few days ago, I resolved this issue for me in another, IMHO, interesting way.
My problems started after I realized that putting 50K+ files from emails created by https://thehorcrux.com is too much for iCloudDrive. I deleted files first on macOS and this made Windows (the latest Win10 build) stuck in syncing, maybe just too many files. I then deleted files on Windows directly. iCloud Drive sync, bookmarks and photos sync worked after this for a while and then stopped syncing on Windows completely, telling me "Initializing..." Both macbooks, iPhone and iPad kept working as expected. I checked the version of iCloud on Windows : it was 14.2. After a search, I landed on this thread. As mentioned, no hints from here worked for me and I already mentally decided that a bigger work is coming since deleting the whole iCloud and related files on Windows would mean a lot of manual syncing and sorting.
Before crashing all this one me, I first synced all files on the iCloud Drive on Windows with "Syncovery" to a NAS share. All worked well, not error reported. I then thought that a second copy as ZIP archive would make me feel much better :-). I use 7-zip. 7-zip refused to create an archive from iCloud Drive, reporting that "the cloud operation was unsuccessful" in the folder "<path to iCloud Drive>/.Trash". I host iCloud Drive in my home folder on the "C:" drive on Windows which is default, IIRC. Error reports by 7-zip confused me, since "Syncovery" did not report anything whereas I asked to take the whole folder, and not only its content, where ".Trash" might be considered as hidden and to be skipped.
I wanted to see what iCloud actually considers to be in "Trash". I first logged in on iclould.com and realized that iCloud knows only two files as candidates for a recovery on Drive. On Windows, the ".Trash" folder had tons of files which I deleted over a longer period of time. Interestingly, ".Trash" does not exist in the iCloud folder on macOS, since, I think, the global system "Bin" is used for this.
I decided to clean ".Trash" on Windows completely and did this form elevated (admin) command line with "rmdir /s /q .Trash", and then recreated this folder with "mkdir .Trash" but from another command line with my regular permissions. For a while, I was busy to check if 7-zip works again, but then I quickly realized that the status window from iCloud Drive stopped showing "Intializing..." on its own and actually counted down files left to sync very quickly. Wow! 8-) It works again! Bookmarks were synced again in Firefox, and iCloud Photos showed up in a sync in Lightroom! Yeah! It is back, no hassle with file sorting!
Try this, it might work for you too. I wish some engineering folks from Apple would read this too. I can gladly send some logs if I knew which. I think some weird things happened to ".Trash" which both system did not stand, so to say ;-)
Good luck!
I honestly can't understand how they though that putting out more terrible windows software would convince people to buy macs.
Hey apple - we understand the issue isn't our windows PCs, it is your abysmal software. Maybe consider testing things before you release them in the future so you don't waste everyone's time.
Thanks :)
No word on this? It's been stuck initializing since February 2024, like 5 months now. Tried uninstalling and reinstalling with no help, rechoosing a folder etc. also doesn't work, deleting the folder entirely and starting a new one, no go.
Does this product even work or is it abandonware and i missed the notice?
So I fixed it, here's how:
buy another NON DELL computer.
I have been a Dell guy for a long time, the last 2 brand new Dells I bought would not run iCloud. One factor could be one was an i3 and the other an i5 -who knows. All I know is I bought a pretty beefy powerspec from Microcenter with an AMD Ryzen CPU and it loaded and RUNS iCloud MS store app perfectly. NO firewalls bypassed or other crazy suggestions in this thread, runs fine now on this new PC.
I would be curious to know how many of you having issues are using a Dell PC (desktop). ALL my Dells for the last 5+ years (all Windows 10 upgraded to 11) ran the iCloud app just fine. So eh I have to blame Dell on this one, at least in my case.
Hope this helps anyone out there
all I am saying is I def tried ALL the admin privilege suggestions and a million other things mentioned in this thread on 2 brand new Dells but I assume the fact they were Intel based had to have something to do with it......both PCs were Windows Pro 11 but the AMD loaded and runs the iCloud app just fine with NO changes to the PC at all....no admin privs, moving iCloud directories around etc....nothing.....loaded right up......that's all I am saying
As I said, I am not talking about an older computer, I am talking about a new one that will not load iCloud App. I too have an older Acer Laptop with Windows 11 Pro on it and it runs iCloud app just fine. My point was the newer Dells (and possibly any newer Windows 11 machine) might not run iCloud app good or at all (in my case)
This worked for me. Just make sure you have everything in the cloud as local stuff gets deleted during the process.
You do not need to change the folder very likely. I got to this "Initializing" state after changing the folder from system to another drive, definitely not permission issues.
This worked for my issue. I was unable to finish setting up iCloud synch to outlook. Constantly told me username or password was incorrect and to log out and back in which didn't resolve the issue. This worked! Thanks!
Me too! I wrote several times here and in feedback, but tech support hasn't solved the problem for more than a month. P.s. Icloud 14.1 is the latest!
NAGAS004, won’t you still lose all pending uploads with this resolution?
Not working for me :(
Yes, but eventually it'll happen again. It is not friendly for the user we have to do this every time it happens.
I can't even remove iCloud for Windows from my PC. Has anyone else had this problem?
iCloud for Windows says it has not fully initialized
NagaS004, I love you. Thank you so much for your tip. Apple techs/devs, here is your teacher...
Is there any news about this issue? still experiencing it right now (May 9 2024)
icloud for Windows - stuck on initializing
