Cannot load iCloud Drive

yo I had the same problem. it was driving me crazy for months. i just lived with it because i didn't navigate using file explorer into my one drive folder often enough to bother trying to fix it. but as of right now it loads fast.

guess what? like many of you i too have icloud installed. and i literally said to myself "there is no way it has anything to do with icloud. that has nothing to do with it."

guess what else? i always had the little notification in the action center popping up a toast saying "failed to create container(s) for icloud drive". and that was another problem that was bugging me for months but i didn't use it frequently enough to bother trying to fix it.

yo my solution might not fix your issue with one drive being very slow, but heres what worked for me. coincidentally, it killed two birds with one stone.

when you click the icloud app and open settings in the taskbar tray, it doesn't let you change the directory of where you want your icloud folder to be stored on your pc. well i turned off the icloud feature, UNchecked the icloud check box, then hit APPLY. then i rebooted my pc. then i went in and was able to change the directory of where icloud wants its icloud drive path to be.

whatever the default path is that icloud picks for your icloud drive to be stored in windows, focus all your effort on changing that path. click apply anytime you make a change. uncheck that icloud drive check box. click apply. click options. change the path. pick somewhere on a separate disk drive or somewhere for it to live. click OK. immediately click apply. reboot pc.

i checked the box to turn on icloud drive again after successfully changing the path where it wants to live and magically i stopped getting the "failed to create container(s) for icloud drive" toast notifications. i hurried to check if OneDrive was still being slow, and lo and behold ITS FAST!

A final note is i would caution against blaming one side or the other (apple or Microsoft) for being at fault for causing this (these) problems for users. in fact in my observation it would seem that both parties are infact doing their due diligence because icloud drive app for windows conflicting with windows native cloud folder handling api's means its trying to adapt itself to work in the windows environment even though it would prefer not to. this is a good thing because it means we have communication back and forth and this facilitates progress and reduces the distance between forces that would rather be separate.

in other words, onedrive is hanging when opening folders because it knows icloud drive is using the windows native api calls that work in parallel with one drive, and its putting one drive on hold because its failing to create containers for icloud drive.

this is what worked for me and i am happy about it!

I was able to find a solution that seemed to be causing this issue for me. Open up the File Explorer and click on the Local Disk under This PC (It usually is the C: Drive). From there you should see a folder named Users. Click on the Users folder and open it. It should now show you folders for each of the User Accounts on the PC. Right click on the user folder that the iCloud data is stored to. If you can't see one or don't know which one it is, open up the iCloud settings app and click on the Options button next to the iCloud Drive. This should open up a pop up and tell you the location of where the iCloud folder is stored. It will look something like this C:\Users\(Your User Name)\iCloudDrive. Back to the File Explorer, if you click on the Users folder and opened it and don't see you User folder it means that it has been hidden. In this case right click on the Users folder and click on Properties. Under the General tab in the Attributes section you will find a "Hidden" check box. Uncheck that box and click apply. A popup will appear and you will want to apply everything to this folder AND all of the subfolders. Once you unhide all of the folders, it should begin to work again now that iCloud can locate the unhidden folder where it stores all of your docs. If you are having a hard time finding any of the folders remember that you can type in the location of the folder into the address bar at the top of the File Explorer (ie C:\Users\...) and locate them that way. You might have to type in folder locations and unhide them working backwards from the iCloudDrive folder like I did but I hope this helps you guys as it was able to fix the issue for me.

Hi Bluecat75,

We suggest making sure that you're using the latest iCloud for Windows version and that you've installed any available updates for Windows.

You can find the link for the latest version of iCloud in the following link or check the Microsoft Store for updates.

Download iCloud for Windows - Apple Support

If the issue persists, reach out to Apple Support so that they can look into this with you further. They can be reached here: Apple Support

Take care.

i have this error too. i tried this and my user folder and my i cloud drive folder are both not hidden. also i cant change the path of the icloud drive folder to, for example, the root folder of a separate disk so that it doesnt have any issues trying to find its folder. i need to be able to change this setting, but this setting is greyed out:

like, i dont have a problem making a partition out of one of my disks so that icloud drive can have its own RAW disk to format however it pleases. all we ask is that it play nice with each other!

love,

cam

Did you find a solution? I have the same problem. Thanks

Did this get resolved? i have the same issue and i have reinstalled the latest version.... no change.