Newbie refugee from Dropbox needs setup help

Winborg 7 Ultimate user. Dropbox refugee since DropBox ending support for Windows 7. Installed Syncthing v1.27.0 as last working version for Windows 7. Program seems to have installed fine, but cannot get configuration window in Firefox to connect or open at all. Have full and complete unrestricted admin rights to everything on computer and router. Firewall is configured to allow Syncthing to pass (configured by install routine). Have manually added TCP and UDP port forwards on both LAN and WAN ports to both 22000 and 8384 ports (neither works) to the LAN static IP of my computer. Despite all this, nothing loads when trying to open the Syncthing configuration screen in Firefox. Just getting… Unable to connect

An error occurred during a connection to 127.0.0.1:8384.

The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments. If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer’s network connection. If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure that Firefox is permitted to access the web.

Can someone help please with the required basics? If I can’t even get to the configuration screen, I can’t even begin to look at the program and none of the setup guides I’ve been able to find deal with as basic a problem as not even being able to load the config browser screen.

You mentioned having “installed” syncthing, but how exactly? Specifically, how do you start syncthing?

Syncthing itself is just an executable, there’s nothing to install. There are wrappers or community-made installers available. Some may setup a service to run syncthing, while others will require you to start syncthing yourself.

I think you will have to use an older Syncthing version. From some quick googling I think 1.21.4 is the latest to support Windows 7. (Edit: that version doesn’t exist, so the report I was basing it on is confused. I guess 1.27.0 is as good a guess as any based on more reliable reports. Carry on.)

And you’ll need to disable upgrades. Ideally someone into classic computing[1] could write up an article at some point with which old versions to install and how to prevent them from upgrading on various OSes.


  1. I don’t think this is old enough to classify as retrocomputing yet :smiley: ↩︎

On Windows, the easiest way to block all Syncthing upgrades is to add STNOUPGRADE to the OS environment variables (and set it to 1). This can be done using the GUI without any command line skills needed. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn’t provide an official tutorial on how to do it, but I think there is quite a good explanation with screenshots provided at https://tenforums.com/tutorials/121664-set-new-user-system-environment-variables-windows.html.

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I would be remiss if I did not suggest to you that you shouldn’t run Windows 7 except possibly in an air-gapped network.

My bet is that you cannot reach the UI because Syncthing isn’t actually running. Please use Task Manager to look for Syncthing processes —- there should be two.

I installed it via the executable I downloaded from the github website called syncthing-1.27.0-setup.exe Size: 25,962,142 bytes CRC: E50A06B6 MD5: 5394f3d9c5f0f140cea2631696d0ef48

This installer puts a link to start it in Programs Folder called Syncthing Configuration Page, which just opens the default browser pointed at the browser interface page. This is the page that can’t be loaded, so it stalls at the very first hurdle.

I can’t see anything obviously related to Syncthing in task manager, unless they’re named something completely unexpected and non-obvious.

That sounds a lot like Syncthing isn’t running. Take a look at Starting Syncthing Automatically — Syncthing documentation .

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I look at the Windows 7 thing very differently. Given all the built-in data scraping and telemetry that can’t be disabled, removed or turned off in Windows 10/11, I think a very strong argument can be made that Windows 7 (or at least the modified versions of Windows 7 with all the telemetry stripped out) are far more secure and reliable and effective that anything else that came after. That’s certainly been my experience at least, but this isn’t a discussion about operating systems. I am more than happy for those who believe the Microsoft mantra, to stick with what they know and trust.

OK, wow this software is hard to even get running. Task Scheduler didn’t work. An error has occurred for task Syncthing… User account restriction error. Blank passwords not allowed. Gave up on Task Scheduler at that point and went with a simple shortcut in Startup instead… This does nothing either Exception 0xc0000005 0x8 0x0 0x0 PC=0x0

runtime.asmstdcall(0x100100150009) runtime/sys_windows_amd64.s:76 +0x89 fp=0x34f4c0 sp=0x34f4a0 pc=0xf7faa9

rax 0x0 rbx 0x26bf0a0 rcx 0x27126c8 rdx 0x20 rdi 0x7fffffdd000 rsi 0x34f6b8 rbp 0x34f600 rsp 0x34f498 r8 0x26bedc0 r9 0x271202a r10 0xfa2e8 r11 0xc000004000 r12 0x34f708 r13 0x0 r14 0x26bda60 r15 0x3 rip 0x0 rflags 0x10246 cs 0x33 fs 0x53 gs 0x2b

Starting to wonder if this programme could be made any more difficult :melting_face:

Syncthing has likely upgraded automatically, and that’s why you cannot start it anymore. I would recommend uninstalling Syncthing completely, then adding the STNOUPGRADE environment variable, and only then installing the program again. Otherwise, Syncthing will keep upgrading itself to the newest version every time you try to run it, which will of course result in an executable that cannot start under Windows 7.

Note that the installer you downloaded above is not the same as the official Syncthing package for Windows which is distributed in a zip archive (there is no installer): https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/releases/tag/v1.27.0

For @billstewart’s Windows installer that you downloaded, its GitHub project page nicely details all the various install options and is well worth reading first before launching the installer: https://github.com/Bill-Stewart/SyncthingWindowsSetup/

And for your particular setup, the “Downgrading an Installation” section.

Whohoo! OK, deleted the previous version, added the environment variable, downloaded the archive of v1.27.0 and voila, now it runs!

Now I’ll add the shortcut to auto-start at system start and then I’ll start trying to figure out how to use it. Thank you for all the help.