User comments about offline files

Article
03/01/2006

This is a catch-all post for user comments and questions about offline files, aka client-side caching. I’m turning off comments on all my previous posts in the Offline Files category, and redirecting readers here instead. Hopefully this will cut down on all the duplicate answers :) As I’ve said before, don’t email me your questions – post them here instead. Wait, no, don’t post right away – first read through the comments in the previous posts! Your question has probably been answered before…

Comments

Anonymous
March 08, 2006
I had to perfom a fresh install of XP Pro becuase my XP would not boot (even to safe mode). When it stoped booting, I was away from the office (network shares) that the offline folder was syncronizing to (My Documents), therefore I have modified docs in an archived "c:windowscsc" folder that never got a chance to sync.

I read a past post explaining to use the csccmd tool with the /extract switch to make a backup copy of the CSC folder readable... however the /extract swith has a sytax of "/EXTRACT[:<\servershare[path]>] /TARGET:<path> [/RECURSE] [/ONLYMODIFIED][/STOPONERROR]"... so I am not for sure how to get that to work with a backup copy of a CSC folder...

I need to recover these offline files into real documents so that I can resync them to the network share. I thought you might be able to use the CSCCMD tool, but if so, I don't know how to. Can you find me a way to get this offline file storage CSC folder back into real documents?

I have been working with Microsoft support, but they seem pretty clueless.

thanks!
Anonymous
March 08, 2006
If this was a normal situation, and you wanted to extract files from the CSC folder, you could say something like

mkdir c:recoveredfiles
csccmd /extract:\myservermyshare /target:c:recoveredfiles /recurse /onlymodified

This extract copies of all the documents on \myservershare that you've modified while offline, and puts them into c:recoveredfiles

But this definitely isn't a normal situation, since you reinstalled XP. You could try copying the saved state of the CSC folder back onto windowscsc and then running csccmd as above, but I'm not sure what the chances of success are - sorry
Anonymous
March 15, 2006
Hello there, I'm a user support specialist at an upstate NY college and I have just applied some registry changes to allow users' to synchronize their favorites in IE so they can access them from any unit on campus. Recently one of my users received an error message during logoff and I wondered if there is a registry change I can make to prohibit sync at logoff?
Anonymous
March 16, 2006
Help!
No one can seem to give me an answer on this, so I am trying everywhere. In a test environment I have a Samba server and Win2K client. I want to make the My Documents folder available offline. But, when I do this... everything syncs fine... I can access files fine... I just can not rename a file. Everytime I try to rename a file, Windows tells me that the folder that I am currently in does not exist and do I want to create it. Of course it exists, I am in it now and clicking Yes does nothing and clicking No does the same. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks! -Cheers, Peter.
Anonymous
March 24, 2006
I have Group Policy automatically redirect all network users' My Documents folders to a common share on a server. The problem I'm running in to is that enabling this redirection also enables offline files. I do not want offline files enabled. Is there a different Group Policy setting that turns disables Offline Files, while still allowing for the redirection of the My Documents folder?

Thanks,

Bart
Anonymous
March 26, 2006
I am lost for ideas, so any help here will be appreciated.

I have been using offline files, with great success, for some months now.

Recently however, a strange thing has started; whenever I update an offline file, it "looses" it's offline status. Ie, you can right click the file, and it's no longer marked as available offline, or pinned. It does not matter if you open the file directly on the share, or from the "Offline files folder", the same thing happens. The updates are not lost, they do in fact get written, but it is like it's saying "OK, your update is now written, so let's remove the offline flag".

Any ideas?
Anonymous
March 30, 2006
I have been using offline files for a while and all has been good. Then my server that stored these files crashed and I have moved all files to another server without any issue. All my systems though are still trying to connect to the server that no longer exists. How can I stop offline files from pointing to a server that no longer exists? I saw this question posed on this thread or one of your other threads, but I never saw the answer. Can anyone help with this?
Anonymous
April 06, 2006
I have had a problem develop on three user's computers over the past few weeks. Throughout the day offline files will dtate that it doesn't have a connection to the server and disallows access to any files.

If they click the syncronize button all will work fine for a minute until the process repeats itself.

I have tried several fixes including clearing the cache and applying KB884020, but nothing has worked.

We have been running this policy for years without issue until now. All of the clients are XP Pro SP2 and the domain and server are windows 2000.

Any help would be deeply appreciated.
Anonymous
April 11, 2006
Offline Files & VPN
=============
I have the following problem with using Offline Files & VPN. I saw this problem mentioned on the Net, but no solution.

Configuration:
a.Client:
1.Win XP Pro, SP2, all latest fixes
2.CheckPoint SecuRemote VPN
b.Server
3.Win 2003, all latest fixes

I have drive U mapped to \serverusersuser.X.

Directory U:My Documents is made available for offline access.

My Documents is redirected to U:My Documents.

There's directory U:Work that is NOT available for offline access.

At work, everything works fine and before leaving I sync the offline folder.

At home, I login OFFLINE (using cached credentials), since VPN is not available yet. Offline files are available in cached mode.

I fire up VPN and logon onto the FW.

Drive U: becomes available (I can browse to U:Work), but offline folders are OFFLINE (the icon says Offline Files - Computer(s) offline).

Trying to synchronize manually fails as follows:
After some time, a login prompt appears.
If I enter my login info, it fails with the message:
"Offline Files (server name): Unable to connect to 'share'. Multiple connections to a server or shared resource by the same user, using more than one user name, are not allowed. Disconnect all previous connections to the server or shared resource and try again."

If I reverse the order, i.e. I logon onto VPN BEFORE Windows logon, Offline Folders are online.

Any ideas?
Anonymous
April 12, 2006
You look like the sort of chap who can fix my problem. I have a number
of users who are unable to use offline file synchronization. When you
click on TOOLS --> FOLDER OPTIONS, the OFFLINE FILES tabs is not there.
Your thoughts on this matter would be greatly appreciated.
Anonymous
April 14, 2006
Hello,

After extensove testing, I found the best way to work with offline files is NOT to use the slow link detection.

As this is a feature that checks the throughput to the servers from which we made files available, this has a side effect that group-shares (which are not to be taken offline) can not be accessed wehenever the systems think our connection is to slow.

The current way we handle this is to use a batch-script that allows a user to put himself offline.

Kind regards.

Hans

this is the script (it can be improved upon):

@rem COMMENT: Work Offline with My Documents and other Offline Files
@rem=========================================================================

@echo off
cls
rem -------------------------------------------------------------------------
if not exist csccmd.exe goto :Noccssmd

rem -------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo Enumerating cached shares on machine
csccmd /enum | findstr /i \ > %temp%%computername%_enum.txt
if not errorlevel 0 goto :NoEnum
echo Done Enumerating shares
echo.

rem -------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo Disconnecting all cached shares
for /f %%a in (%temp%%computername%_enum.txt) do csccmd /disconnect:%%a
if not errorlevel 0 goto :NoDisconnect
echo Done Disconnecting Shares
echo.
goto :end

rem -------------------------------------------------------------------------
:Noccssmd
echo csccmd Executable not found
echo.
Pause
goto :Done

rem -------------------------------------------------------------------------
:NoEnum
echo Error Disconnecting Shares
echo.
goto :Done

rem -------------------------------------------------------------------------
:NoDisconnect
echo Error Disconnecting Shares
echo.
goto :Done

rem -------------------------------------------------------------------------
:end
echo You are Offline

rem -------------------------------------------------------------------------
:Done
Anonymous
April 18, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
April 26, 2006
We've started to see a problem where XP laptop desktop icons stored on the H drive appear when first logging on. Sometime after a synchronization (after the computer has been used offline) the icons will disappear. Killing explorer.exe via task manager and then launching explorer.exe will restore the icons. I've seen a earlier post about a freeware utility and will try it. Can anyone shed some light onto what is going on here?
Anonymous
April 26, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
April 27, 2006
I have my entire My Documents folder offline on my laptop. For one subfolder, I get the error message when syncing "The system is currently running with the last known good configuration". Any idea why I get this only for ONE of many folders?

Thanks,

Patrick Schmid
Anonymous
April 28, 2006
Hello Jeffrey,

I beieve this is due to how synchronization behaves: when offline files are being synchronized, all connections to the server are closed.

If your Icons reside on the same physical server where your H: drive and (redirected?) Offline files are stored, the evens you describe, will occur.
Anonymous
May 09, 2006
I recently started using a machine that had apparently been set up with some folders checked as "Make Available Offline".

Not knowing any better, I thought I don't need to have that checked, and then all of my files within that folder disappeared. I cannot find them on the machine at all.

Can anyone provide any thoughts and assistance?

Brent
Anonymous
May 10, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 12, 2006
Suresh - I remember it as being hellish because I was using it on several computers at the same time. In this situation it's "last writer wins", so whichever computer I logged out of last would be my default profile. And it would quite happily overwrite or delete any information in the profiles used by other computers. So I had to be very careful about the order in which I logged in and out of computers, what I did with each profile, etc.

The difference in this case is that Folder Redirection implements shared access to state stored on a single server, whereas Roaming Profiles implements exclusive access to state that is pushed down to the client.
Anonymous
May 12, 2006
Brent - Have you checked the obvious, i.e. that those files aren't actually hosted on your machine, but are instead on a remote server?
Anonymous
May 23, 2006
Hi,

I wounder if there is any maximum amount (total size, number of files and so on) that offline files can handle? I have a user that have about 4,5 Gb and 20 000 files that he synchronizes. Sometimes it works fine but often does he have problems with the synchronize.

/Fredrik
Anonymous
May 28, 2006
I wonder if this basic thing was ever discussed in debth - I could not find a clear explanation anywhere so far. I mean how exactly Offline Files work ( just from archetectural point of view)? TO be more specific here is an example what and why can be important to understand:

Laptop user opened some network files (while connected to LAN network) from the share that is marked "Automatically ...cache ...documents..,etc." under the "Offline Settings" on the server. Now these files are cached locally. He then goes away and after a while connects to the network at remote location that is connected to the original server over slow link (say 256k). Now he wants to work with those files. Here is a question:
" when he opens this file is this file is accessed smartly from the cache or dumb from the network server?"

With a number of settings for Offline Files the vague mentioning of the behavior in Microsoft documentation is close to useless.

Most Microsoft records (and by non-Microsoft specialists like Mark Minasi) one way or another confirm that this file will be accessed locally after short comparison of the cached file and network file. According to them that will greatly increase access speed for these files. SYnchronization will occur on the background (???) and when you log off or force it.

ANYBODY HERE - WHAT IS TRUE? How indeed it works?

In my experience it is not the case - to open a 200k Excel file (that was cached) takes about 40 sec with slow link connection as opposed to 3 sec when opened directly from local drive. That seems contradict most of the documents and shows that there really NO any performance gain because system is dumb enough to always access network when it is awailable even if there is a local cached version of the file.

Checking or unchecking 'Optimize for performance' checkbox on the share "Offline settings" does not make any difference (you would think that should instruct XP not to go to the network for cached files).

Using group policy to force the XP to consider connection as 'slow' does not make any difference either.

SO WHAT IS IT? IS THERE ANY WAY TO FORCE XP TO ALWAYS TRY TO OPEN LOCAL FILE FIRST? (Short of forcing it to go offline - that is what we do now to be able to work with files, ridiculous as it might look).

Also, Microsoft says that with Quick Sync files are just verified to be "complete" as opposed to "fully syncronized" with Full Sync. Could Microsoft or anybody, for the matter, clarify what exaclty is 'complete' or 'incomplete' file and how it is different from syncronized file?
Anonymous
May 31, 2006
Fredrik - there's no limit on the number of files in the offline cache, and no limit on the total size of a folder that's explicitly "made available offline". However, there's a 2GB limit on the total size of files that are temporarily cached (from a share that's marked for automatic caching).
Anonymous
May 31, 2006
Vadim - I'm not aware of any published papers on exactly how offline files work.

Your explanation of what happens when you connect over a slow link is the "expected" behavior. Yes, it's painful. I don't know of any Microsoft documents that say the opposite - could you give URLs?

Search through my previous blog entries for "slow link" to find more discussion of this.
Anonymous
June 02, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
June 05, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
June 09, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
June 10, 2006
Donohue, would not csccmd (version 1.1) with an option '/extract " do what you want? See article 884739 on Microsoft. But if cscsniff does not see anything that looks bad. The databse might be corrupt.

Overall, reading all the comments, questions and answers on Offline Files feature and after my own extensive research, testing and retesting I want to say (being a little sore at the moment on the whole thing) that Offline Files spells troubles. Same as roaming profiles.

Yes, it works. Sometimes. In a very special, limited, 'vanilla' environment. As many things in a Microsoft OS, starting with Windows 95 and ending with latest version. In most other, enterprise environment, if you want something more than just basic networking (available apparently in any other OS) you would use third party software. Offline Files is just point in case. It's not only poor documented (otherwise what would we all do here?) it is not very thoroghly designed and is really buggy.

I am currenlty looking for third party software to provide me with syncs (automatic and trouble free, mind you) for number of users in sattelite offices who connect to central office over relatevely slow links (125 - 400k).

I did everything I could to make Offlline Files work for them (creating inserted logon scripts for them, using mobsync with undocumented (!) switches, csccmd, etc.) - it is would not work either because there is another known or unknown bug or it simply was not designed to work in a most useful way.

I spent numerous hours trying to find a way to make it work (just because I am stubborn). Waste of time. I am using it now for a limited number of laptop users who can manually sync their files and aware of dangers and I'm not happy looking forward to the time when I have to move their shares or they get their drives full, etc. And what to I do with the users who have limited space on c: drive? Moving cache to another drive is not possible by itself and even 'cachemov' utility is not available anymore.

Amount of troubles and headaches with this feature I think outweight the benefits.

ANYBODY, any pointers to a good third party software that provides a robust files sync capability?
Anonymous
June 15, 2006
OK, here's a simple problem I'm hoping someone can help me with.

When our laptop users are working offline from the network, login to the laptop and try to create a new file in their My Documents, it says "unable to create file" "Access is Denied".

If they connect the LAN cable and allow the computer to go online, they can then make new files there just fine.

If they pull the LAN cable and allow the computer to drop to offline, they can still make new files just fine.

If they then reboot and log back in albeit still offline, it's back to stage 1, access is denied.

No other problems with synchronising etc.

Background info:
XP SP2 clients, 2003 servers/domain
My Documents (as well as all other folders) have been redirected to relevant sections of UNC path within a single domain based DFS namespace. eg: \domaindfsUsers...
Roaming profiles are used.
Anonymous
June 16, 2006
In response to Bart Edson's post, a little late, but:

There is an GPO option under 'User Configuration -> Admin. Templates -> Network -> Offline Files -> Do not automatically make redirected folders available offline' which should fix you up.

>>>

I am experiencing an issue with W2K3 Server R2 DFS / Offline files / My Documents re-direction as follows:

- I have two W2K3 Servers, version R2 installed and DFS enabled with several DFS folder targets

- All users have their My Documents folder re-directed to <DFSroot>Users%username%, which has folder targets and synchronization on both DFS servers

- All laptop users have Offline Files enabled for the DFS folder target of their 'My Documents'

The issue I am experiencing is that, when the laptop users Offline Synchronization happens, occasionally their entire Users folder gets deleted from the DFS servers. I do not experience this issue if I disable referrals to one of the folder targets in DFS.

I have opened a support case with M$ and have received horrible support from them, in most cases I know more about DFS than their engineers do (ahhh!!). Before enabling DFS to work with our existing My Docs re-direction and Offline Files, I confirmed that these three technologies are compatible. The only place I could find this compatibility matrix was buried at the FAQ: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techinfo/overview/dfsfaq.mspx#E6B.

Anyone had any experience with this issue?

Thanks
-Joe
Anonymous
June 16, 2006
Vadim,

No, unfortunately the csccmd (version 1.1) with an option '/extract " won't do it. csccmd seems to rely on the database itself. And as mentioned earlier, cscsniff is convinced that the database is empty. The database is the part that is missing in this case.

I've managed to recover about 60% of our CFO's documents from his email archive, but unfortunately, the most current, largest documents appear to be corrupted in the CSC folder. So the final upshot is that 100's of hours of work have been lost.

I've even called MS and paid PS to help us. They pretty much have been useless as well. :(

I agree with your general statement. A word to the wise folks, offline files are a recipie for disaster as long as poor documentation and shaky design are the norm...
Anonymous
June 19, 2006
Have read all the comments about Offline files both above and in all links that brough me here. My problem is that my new laptop is ignoring the Group Policy settings. I want to use .mdb files offline, and have taken all the steps in Group Policy to allow this. Still I cannot synch them. In order to error check, I changed the for files not cached to "*.doc" but still all doc files were cached and *.mdb were not. My previous laptop, using the same User Account etc worked fine, so I know it is not a server problem. Any clues out there as to why my Group Policy is being ignored..... Running Windows XP SP2
Anonymous
June 20, 2006
Paul: I sat here most of the day trying to identify why a group policy wasn't being applied to a particular machine..

I said that I checked three times.. however.. when I placed the machine into the correct OU with the policy enforced it started working.. I had another machine with a similiar name in that OU that was throwing me off.
Anonymous
June 20, 2006
Vadim, your description of the problem regarding multi-site Offline Files/Folder Redirection is perfect. I am having exactly the same problem. The thing that particularly baffles me is how the slow-link GPO setting seems to simply not work. We have relatively good connectivity between sites (full T1) but users have enormous amounts of data in their My Documents folders (some as much as 15GB) and large files as well. I have set the slow-link threshold to twice that speed, and it still fails to go offline.

Some of this, I have inherited so I am trying to figure out how to restructure offline files and folder redirection. I am definately open to third-party software. Roughly 2/3 of my users are laptop folks who seem not to be able to live without every single byte they have ever created :-)

Any thoughts?
Anonymous
June 29, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
June 30, 2006
Vadim, I am trying to use the CSCCMD /Disconnect to force servers offline, however I am getting inconsistant results...

I have two servers... one works & the other doesn't... Here's the interesting part:

Both servers are nearly identical, & in the same location / subnet(s). In fact they are two halves of the same cluster setup in an active - active arrangement! Each one is primary for different shares, however all shares are on the same SAN! The only difference I can see is that the servershare that doesn't work is also running Veritas Quota Manager...

Interesting part... Part 2:

unpatched Win XP SP1 cilents work...
patched Win XP SP1 Clients do not!!!
SP1 clients upgraded to SP2 do not!!!
Ground up SP2 clients Work!!!

HELP!!
Anonymous
July 03, 2006
I've got a laptop that has been using offline files for a while. Many months ago we moved a server. Before I knew about csccmd, I managed to remove all the old offline content and sync to the new server. Fine.

Last week, the old server name started showing up in the UI (OLD_SERVER Unavailable for reconnect).

When I go through the "offline files" folder, all the files in there show the correct new server as the one they should sync to (and apparantly do). Just to try it, I used csccmd /moveshare to try to move from the old server to the new one. That didn't seem to make any difference.

So I don't know how to get rid of the tray icon and the constant attempt to sync. The actual data appears to be good, I just have this phantom reference to an old server that I can't track down.

I don't even need any data associated with it, just to get rid of the sync association. Any ideas?

--
Darren
Anonymous
August 10, 2006
Hi, I have read all I could find on the Web about Offline files, and your blog is one of the more useful :)

The "csccmd /disconnect" option solved most of my problem. Version 1.1 of this tool works on my XP SP2 machine.

Unfortunately one problem remain: How can you put Offline files in Online status again using batch or policy settings ?

The computer stays offline, even when you log off, restart and log on again. Have also tried "mobsync /logoff" and "mobsync /logon" from batch and with the "synchronize ALL files" setting in "ToolsFolder optionsOffline files" enabled to ensure a full sync rather than a quick sync. While initiating a sync in disconnected mode, the syncronisation starts, but ends shortly without doing anything. As long as computer is online is all works fine.

The only way I can get the computer online again is the manual way : If you click the icon in system tray, then you will get the question to go online again, and if answered yes then computer is put online and synchronized.

While online "Mobsync /logon" and "mobsync /logoff" now works fine again.

Is there a hidden switch somewhere ? and if so could anyone point me in the correct direction ...
Anonymous
August 19, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
August 21, 2006
Hi Jonathan.

We have a problem with activesync where if a remote user modifies a file offline, then reboots the PC and connects their WLAN the PC tries to sync automatically even though they haven't yet connected VPN. Slow Link Detection is working well now i have got the patch (KB900387) from Microsoft. If the user doesn't modify an offline file then it doesn't try to sync when connecting WLAN and offline files works well.

Thanks, Tas.
Anonymous
August 21, 2006
Sorry, not activesync. I meant mobsync.

Tas.
Anonymous
August 21, 2006
PingBack from http://kevindevin.com/?p=2320
Anonymous
August 25, 2006
I have a potential problem with offline file synchronisation. In a pilot that I have carried out I have redirected 'My Documents' to %homeshare% so that users get straight into their home directories via My Documents. I have then made this available offline by using the 'administratively assign offline files' policy setting (I know redirected folders are made available offline by default but thought I would configre the policy just to make sure). I have set it to synch at logoff and logon so that 'My Documents' is always the same whether users are on or off the network. The pilot has been successful thus far and not thrown up any major problems.HOWEVER, we use roaming profiles and the profiles are contained in the user's home directory. Microsoft have recommended that offline file synchronisation is not enabled on shares that contain user profiles! Is it possible to have one folder within the home directory made available offline? (ie not the profile and other data in the home directory?)I have tried to do this using the 'administratively assign offline files' policy but found that the entire contents of the home directory was still being synched. Tried enabling the 'do not automatically make redirected folders available offline' policy but this did not help. Also tried doing a complete CSC reset.Anyone have any ideas to get round this? How much trouble is it going to cause me if i do have users synching their home directories that contain their profiles?
Anonymous
August 28, 2006
Hey there...
Im a support engineer and have an offline files issue. tbh, im not that familiar with offline files use, so im a bit of a noob to it all really, but here goes:

This specific user can not use offline files. She can connect to the network share and save to it successfully when online. She can also save to the local PC successfully. When the offline folder attempts to sync it scans the files, then lists them and says "Error - Access is Denied". Its unclear however whether the issue is server or client based. Checked user profile, any group policy that might be enforced, and ownership and rights on her user share. All seems okay. I then deleted her user profile from the machine, tried again, no result.

Tried the following:
Gave user local and domain admin rights, sync still failed
Created a new user based on generic template for the site, still failed.

The only two known users who can sync onsite happen to be admins, although one of them is only a power user, not domain admin.

I guess what i really want to know is, is there a log file somewhere that will tell me where the access is denied: is it local, file share or NTFS related?
Anonymous
August 29, 2006
Is there anyway to get around your pc loosing its ability to print to network printers that are shared on a network files server when that share goes offline?
Anonymous
August 30, 2006
We have Folder Redirection and Ofline Files in our organization, via Group Policy. I like the setup, but one issue really bothers me: if a network connection goes down, a user must manually reconnect to the server by double-clicking the System Tray icon when it goes back up. Isn't there a way to set Offline files to "automagically" go back online when the server is detected as available again? My users don't know what to do when their network connection drops, and I'd rather make it easier if I could than make a "click here, do this" document" (my second choice in case I can't do the first).

Thanks for any help you can provide.
Anonymous
August 31, 2006
Is there a way to use Offline Files while attached to a VPN,

My colleague needs quick access to network files, the VPN is too slow to load files, work on and save back.. so she used to copy files locally to work on and then forget to copy back.

Offline files would be good,, but needs to still be connected to the VPN at the same time for other applications.
Anonymous
August 31, 2006
Hi,

I've just disabled offline files on my laptop and I am still receiving the mobsync.exe program on logon telling me there are no item to synchronise.

I don't want this to come up. Can anyone explain to m e why it is still be ing called and how I stop it from happening?

Thanks in advance

Scott
Anonymous
September 13, 2006
I have a client who is having the 'powerpoint hangs when saving large files' in offline mode when the My Documents folder is redirected. The two comments here from others are about the only references I can find to this problem. The last comment references case # srx060605602291.

Has anyone successfully gotten past this issue? Were you able to get a fix that works from Microsoft PSS?

thanks,
david
Anonymous
September 15, 2006
I am having this same problem. Any ideas?
rtpmedic@gmail.com
>>

# re: User comments about offline files
Monday, August 28, 2006 8:22 AM by fin
Hey there...
Im a support engineer and have an offline files issue. tbh, im not that familiar with offline files use, so im a bit of a noob to it all really, but here goes:

This specific user can not use offline files. She can connect to the network share and save to it successfully when online. She can also save to the local PC successfully. When the offline folder attempts to sync it scans the files, then lists them and says "Error - Access is Denied". Its unclear however whether the issue is server or client based. Checked user profile, any group policy that might be enforced, and ownership and rights on her user share. All seems okay.
Anonymous
September 17, 2006
This is in reply to a few people who have posted regarding recovering files from the CSC database.

Briefly, you can only do it if you have the ORIGINAL contents of the CSC folder. That it is, D1 through to D8 subfolders PLUS 00000001 and 00000002 (and 00000003 if it was there initially).

I have been dealing with a problem where the CSC synchronised itself, but I was able to recover everything from the CSC folder prior to this happening except for 00000001 and 00000002. The upshot of this is that the csccmd.exe tool will work only if you have both 00000001 and 00000002.

I've done extensive testing and have come to the conclusion that csccmd.exe will not work without the original 0000001 and 0000002 files. I have also tried to recreate the intial offline file scenario, then copying over D1 through to D8 on top the new folders, but to no avail.

00000001 and 00000002 must contain a lits of files that were/are present in the CSC cache. Even if you copy the files in the cache back in to C:WindowsCSC they will just be ignored by tools such as csccmd.exe.
Anonymous
September 18, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
September 20, 2006
Offline files works rather well except for conflict resolution. If a user selects "Keep both", the files renamed "filename (username v1)" are all empty. This happens to different users on different machines. The users have access to those folders.

Has anyone previously experienced this problem?
Anonymous
September 22, 2006
I try to make files offline and get the error message ""The system is currently running with the last known good configuration"

This was previously reported by Patrick Schmid on April 28, 2006 but I did not see an answer. I don't know whether there is any limitations in the number of files one could have offline and whether this is impacting on me.

I tried removing some files and i am able to put those files back offline but some files i just can't put offline.
Anonymous
September 25, 2006
I reinitialised the cache based on the following instructions, http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;230738
and it solved my problem
Anonymous
September 28, 2006
Great Blog,

After spending most of the evening in Google I seem to come to the conclusion that if a user turns of folder syncronisation on his client laptop then all the data that was around in his "my documents" is lost. (that is a fact in this case the folder is empty).

This gives me a no hope story.
http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/20612

But this blog gives me hope.

What I can't truly work out is if the data is in windowscsc and thus can be retived with the csccmd (version 1.1) /EXTRACT option. Or does the data base get over written with null content.

I was of the opinion that a automatic back up is made (was told of some pop up message that had words to the effect of offline folders and ost).

If such a backup is around were is it located and is the above tool the solution.
Anonymous
September 28, 2006
Re: the comment above posted Wednesday, September 13, 2006 12:34 PM by David Jade
"I have a client who is having the 'powerpoint hangs when saving large files' in offline mode when the My Documents folder is redirected. The two comments here from others are about the only references I can find to this problem. The last comment references case # srx060605602291.

Has anyone successfully gotten past this issue? Were you able to get a fix that works from Microsoft PSS?

thanks,
david"

I have been having this problem intermittently for the past two years, and have still not found a fix. It happens with a different powerpoint file every two months or so, and I use powerpoint when offline with large files extensively - probably saving tens of different large powerpoint files while offline each week. I have been looking for references to this problem during that time and this is the first one I have seen.

It only seems to happen for a very few powerpoint files - all large - but most large powerpoint files I save do not have this problem. When a file starts to have this problem it causes repeated crashes of powerpoint even after cold reboots, which each then cause an complete freeze the whole Windows XP OS.

When it does happen, as noted above, powerpoint freezes close to the end of the save progress bar. However, it does not just crash powerpoint. It then becomes impossible to force powerpoint to close - it ignores 'end task' - and all other applications (Excel, IE, Firefox, Windows Explorer) quickly become 'not responding' and also then ignore 'end task'. When this powerpoint freeze happens I quickly try to save unsaved work in other applications as quickly as possible before the whole machine becomes unresponsive. After the freeze the machine becomes impossible to shut down; I have to hold down the power button to switch it off.

Powerpoint is the only application I know that can take down Windows XP in this way. I didn't think this should be possible, so I'm guessing a bug in offline files that powerpoint triggers.

Windows XP SP2, all latest updates
PowerPoint 2003 SP2, all latest updates
My Documents redirected to a server share, with entire shell folder taken offline
Only occurs intermittently during saving of some large PowerPoint files (>5MB)
Saving to a subfolder of My Documents while offline
Does not occur when saving the same files to a local (non offline) drive, e.g. C:

trounce at gmail dot com
Anonymous
September 29, 2006
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Anonymous
October 25, 2006
I am in the process of introducing DFS into an environment. They currently have a file server which all of the remote users have their "My Doc" redirected to using offline files. Is there a way to:

move the files at the server level
use CSCCMD /MOVESHARE: at the client level so that the end users do not have to resync their "My Docs" all over again to the DFS root?

Anonymous
October 30, 2006
Re: references to the KB870593 hotfix and srx060605602291, and my post on Sept 29 (above) I finally called Microsoft support, and they said that this hotfix was included in Windows XP SP2. Since I am still having the 'powerpoint hangs when saving large files' crash as mentioned above with SP2, either a) the hotfix does not resolve all the issues, or b) there is another issue with identical symptoms. Does anyone have any more information, and/or another hotfix or KB article that might refer to this?
Anonymous
October 30, 2006
By the way, the crash also happens with Winzip 9.0 SR1 all the time, when trying to create a new zip file on an offline folder (no problems when creating it on the C or D drive), and also sometimes with Access 2003 SP2. It seems to be something about the type of file access these apps use when saving data that causes the offline files crash
Anonymous
November 02, 2006
Hi, I'm having two WinXP SP2 computers with redirected My documents folder and neccessary access to both share and file system. The My documents folder is redirected to the home share, eg. \homeserverusers%username%. Creating files locally or on the redirected folder works fine, but if I try to make any of the files in the redirected folder available offline (for this user on this computer), all files generates the "access denied" message I've seen several other now refer to. Same \homeserver, but different share works, but I find no problem with the users folder This is not a computer issue since the same computer can make files available offline from another file server, and it's not a security issue to my knowledge since all user home folders have same security settings. Reinitializing the offline files cache has no effect. Any ideas? Is there another way to reinitilize the offline file cache.
Anonymous
November 03, 2006
We have a windows server 2003 domain. I have a user w/ a xp pro laptop who frequently works out of the office. He works on documents in My Documents, which is redirected to a share on the server. Offline Files and synchronization is configured. He uses a VPN to connect to his email, and also to access a network drive which is mapped to the company data drive. When I first set this up, there was a problem when he connected the VPN. His computer went "online" and tried to work off the server for his "My Documents" folder. This was unacceptable, because it made everything terribly slow, so I configured the slow link group policy to disable syncronization when he's on the VPN. That worked nicely. The problem: Now when he is offsite and connected via VPN, the computer stays "Offline" and he cannot access the company data drive (J), unless he goes online, but then that slows everything down to a crawl. I have tried various configurations and cannot seem to get around this problem. I know that if I would make the J: drive available offline he could access this, but this is not possible since the J: drive is huge. So the problem as simply stated as possible is this: When the computer is offline the J: drive cannot be accessed. When the computer is online it is unacceptably slow. I think this is a Microsoft design flaw. I was on chat for an hour w/ a msft person, and he could not help me. What should I do? Ditch offline files altogether?
Anonymous
November 20, 2006
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Anonymous
November 30, 2006
Having trouble killing the "old" server. Used the csccmd tool with sucess on one laptop to move the shares, but on the second laptop, the old server keep popping up as offline. There are still printers on this old server and since XP thinks this server is offline, cannot print to those printers. Will try Friday Sept 29 post from John to see if that works. Any other ideas?
Anonymous
December 13, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 19, 2006
To the guy that posted this...

re: User comments about offline files

Wednesday, April 12, 2006 3:53 AM by qwer1304 Offline Files & VPN

This happens because you are not authenticated to the server correctly. If you lock the computer, and log back on, assuming you require authentication to the server to unlock set in a group policy, you will authenticate, get a new ticket, and be allowed to establish a true connection to the server, allowing you to go online with your files.

Anonymous
December 25, 2006
I have a laptop that logs into the network at where i work too sync autocad files too the local storage. The issue that we have (minor cosmetic issue) is when he is Online too the server and opens a directory that is NOT checked for Offline file / sync . He will have that folder and the data within cached on his laptop when he is OFFLINE For example, the drive is U: in the U: Drive there are 4 folders. A, b, C, D Folder A and b are marked "Make available offline", C and D are NOT marked in that manner. If the user, on the laptop while ONLINE, opens either C or D folder, he will have a cache of that folder when he goes OFFLINE. We'd like to get rid of that behavior. Thanks
Anonymous
December 25, 2006
I have had a disaster - stupid, I know, but any help would be appreciated! I am away from home and office and downloaded all Xmas photos from 2 cameras and numerous cards onto my laptop - into 2 new offline folders that I created to ensure they got synchronised when I was next in the office. When I next connected to VPN my laptop tried to synchronise, but I am on a slow connection so I stopped the synchronisation and went to the 2 new folders to make them unavailable offline. As a result I seem to have lost all the photographs and they are not even in the CSC folder as far as I can see. Is there any way of retrieving them - I have tried making the folders available again offline, but there is no sign of the photos. Please help - Xmas is ruined, particularly as when I uploaded the pictures from the cameras, I deleted all pictures off the devices! Told you it was stupid.....
Anonymous
January 01, 2007
I read through all the comments ... took a while but couldn't determine the real fix to what I'm experiencing. Set up Group Policy on AD OU containing all users of small company with Folder Redirection of My Documents . WinXP laptops have Offline Files turned on with both "Synchronize .... when logging on OR off" boxes unchecked. Slow Link Detection Group Policy is "Not Enabled". Have VPN on laptops and have trained users when not connected at office to log on using cached domain username/password credentials. Placed Synchronize icon on their desktop and trained them to connect to network using VPN first and then synchronize manually when "connected" remotely. The problem is that when they are remote and logon with domain cached credentials, file sync kicks in immediately on log on and log off, even with those options turned off in Folder Options on the WinXP laptop and no Slow Link Detection policy is enabled. This causes an file sync error because they are not yet connected and on log off when not connected and it is a nuisance to have to cancel these rouge file syncs on every remote log on and log off. Can anyone give some insight and a clear solution to why this is happening and how to fix it?
Anonymous
January 08, 2007
I'm having a problem with encrypting offline files. Whenever we turn on encryption, any file that is then made available offline receives the error "access denied." I've applied a couple of hotfixes from Microsoft, including the one mentioned on this website (810859), along with registering CSCUI.DLL (REGSVR32 /S CSCUI.DLL) and I've also making the user a local administrator and nothing. I've been on the phone with MS support for two days, nothing. I've tried deleting the cached files, re-created the Group Policy, and re-applying network permissions. Again nothing. Offline files works without encryption on our network. This "access denied" error only occurs when turning on "Encrypt the Offline Files Cache." Background: We are running a Windows 2000 server with SP4. Our clients are using XP Pro with SP2. We are also running a clustered network with two domain controllers (both win 2k w sp4). Does anyone have any ideas?
Anonymous
January 18, 2007
We changed servers and then I found Offline Files on our laptops kept trying to connect to the old server. After a lot of work I found out how to press Ctrl+Shift while clicking "Delete Files" to reinitialize the cache. The problem is that Offline Files doesn't work at all now... it just throws "Access Denied" for every file on the user's share. I have checked and the user whose computer it is running on does have the permissions for those files, since it is their home directory (redirected to a network share) that they are trying to cache for offline use.
Anonymous
January 30, 2007
In Vista Business edition, right-clicking on one network drive or folder does not give me the "Always available offline" option. It's just not in the context menu at all. It doesn't make any difference if I map the folder as a drive or not. I've previously used Offline Files on the same machine under Windows XP and it worked beautifully. The "Always available offline" option does appear for another file server, just not the one I want. What heuristics determine whether or not the option gets shown, and is there any way to manually make a specified UNC path available offline?
Anonymous
February 07, 2007
Greg D, Did you manage to solve the problem with access denied? We have the same problem you have. Would be nice to here what MS support had to say.
Anonymous
February 14, 2007
I have a user that just moved from the office to work at home. The server at the office is Server 2003, not using group policy. She is using Xp Pro sp2. So now 95% of the time she is offline, and can't move or rename files and folders in her redirected MyDocuments while offline. She can open them, modify, and save them. She has the needed permissions - Full Control and is the owner of the folder and files. While online, connected to the office network, no problems at all. I have around 60 users set up the same way that experiance no problems at all. Anyone know what is going on?
Anonymous
February 16, 2007
I was hoping for some help that hasn't been covered here. I have read this blog twice and haven't seen it meantioned. Someone please help. Details: Server - Server2003, Client - Xp pro Sp2. Not using Group Policy for folder redirection. All machines are fully patched and current. I have a user that can not move her files or folder when offline (redirected mydocuments - \servershare). The files can be opened and modified offline but can not be moved while offline. She is loosing track of her file organization, which her folder is around 1.6gb with around 6633 files. She is only at the office once a month and then she can move or organize her folder while online. But this is a new occurance of about a month. She has used redirected mydocs folder for a year before without any problems. I can not find any documentation or help as of yet to fix this problem. Is this a limitation of offline files or is it a bug? Please someone help me. Thank you.
Anonymous
March 01, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
March 17, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
March 25, 2007
As someone who "didn't get it" for years with offline files, I have to emphatically disagree with Nick above. Offline files have broad application for anyone that uses two computers or more, where one or more might be a notebook and travel. It shouldn't make files available offline as a default without notice, though (and i assume it doesn't). As a small business owner, this offline files feature is a godsend. The reason i've been scouring around for info is to help maintain my database of csc files. Running sales and marketing, as well as doing our own videos, ads, and brochures for a small company of only 5 people, sharing files with those people in the office and my photo/video workstation at home, i could spend days each week organizing and maintaining files. Again, offliine files is a godsend for me/us. The tough thing is i don't want all "shared" files available offline - it takes too long to sync and takes too much space for any notebook I can carry. It would be nice if i had access to the database of offline files so that if a drive crashes, or if i change notebook drives or computers, i could regain my exact resources more easily. It seems like that could/should be a part of some administrative tool set. Or perhaps just a part of the backup utility. I'd say that is Windows biggest weakness for users with a lot of software - how to stay running without becoming mired in the maintenance.
Anonymous
April 13, 2007
I work for a school district. We set up our My Documents folder to replicate to our server for all of our students. This worked fine till we noticed that user data was being copied from one user profile to another to another to another and on and on. Obviously we dont have 1 pc per student. Senario:

Each computer could have dozens of students logging into it.
Each student has thier own account, which creates many local profiles.
At logoff, the computer syncronizes the My Documents folder for that user... and any other user that has ever logged into that computer -> onto the current users home drive. Absolutely unacceptable!!!! To remedy this, I disabled offline folder synchronization in GP. However, some machines stopped synchronizing - others have not. I need each and every PC in the district to stop syncing data (student and teacher) while pointing thier My Documents folder to thier homeshare (drive "Z"). I do not need nor do I want syncing. How do I disable it permanently? The GPO is forced and enabled to disallow syncing , but the PC's seem to have thier own minds.

Anonymous
April 16, 2007
I found this very interesting, especially for those who need to find version 1.1 of CSCCMD: http://www.mountsutro.org/index.php/2006/07/16/381/
Anonymous
April 17, 2007
Hi Andy, With regards to forcing the polciy to all PCs, make sure all other polcies are being applied (i.e. all computer config policies, not user config policies) a good idea is to make sure your winXP firewall is disabled, this has known issues when forcing a computer config policy, to do this navigate to: Computer Configuration>Administrative Templates>network>Network Connections>Windows Firewall>Domain Profile Set the "windows Firewall: Protect all network connections" to disabled. Restart the computers in question and see if this helps.
Anonymous
May 03, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 04, 2007
Greetings all: I have a user that is using Offline Files with Windows XP SP2. The sync works fine, the only problem is that roughly every five minutes, the computer goes "offline" and must be manually synchronized to gain access to network resources. I have tried lowering the slow link speed setting to no avail. This action was a wild guess as to the cause of the problem however. Can anyone point me in the right direction to stop the disconnections every five minutes? Thanks.
Anonymous
May 23, 2007
Dear Sir, I had SBS 2003, with Exchange server 2003, I installed well, and its working fine... I have 75 users, but my liecense only 5 users, i orderd already balance cal , still i not recieved, may be i can recive next week. My problem is , when I restart my Server2003, Exchange server is wrking well , but after 5 or 6 hours its stopping auotomatically, I tried ,and My C drive 35.6 , D drive 75, I made RAID 10 Configuration, and there is nothing else , only exchange......I have symantec cor ed, before I am using redirectioon, now I stopped, and I remove aleardy almost permission for all, I dont know what is the reason, Please give me any solution..... My Email : sallumuji@gmail.com sallumuji@pdhhf.ae
Anonymous
June 08, 2007
Is there any solution to find files with the Windows search feature within redirected folders (such as Desktop or My documents) when network is disconnected althought CSC is enabled ?
Anonymous
June 11, 2007
I have a small WinServ2003 R2 network with 2 DCs and an Exchange server (member). The domain is Win2003 native and I am using DFS to assemble shares on 2 servers into one singe share point for the company. All users are mapped to this share on their z: drive. A couple of users have laptops and work out of the office. For these users I have configured offline files for a couple of folders within the domain-based DFS share (the z: drive). The problem for these users is that when they are away from the office and click on the drive z in windows explorer, it gives them an error saying that the drive is not available. When they click on the computer icon in the system tray and choose status, it reads that the computer is still online. What I have found also is that if I choose settings from that computer icon and then view files and then open one of those files (it suceeds), then the status changes to offline and clicking on the z: drive does not give an error any more. It seems that opening one of the offline files through the view files window initiates a check to see if, in fact, the computer is actually online or not. What do I have to do to make the computer check automatically at bootup or startup or through a command to initiate a check and make the change from online or offline? Is the issue my dfs share? Should i use a stand-alone namespace instead of the domain-based dfs share? is there a hotfix that will remedy this behavior that I haven't heard about? many thanks thomas mccann
Anonymous
July 04, 2007
I have enabled offline files for roaming users on laptops. I have My Document redirected to DFS share. When user work offline, and he click on file, it takes about 10 minutes, before open file. Computer looks like it freeze, but than user get pop up window, telling him that \server......Mydocument can not be access, but than user can work with that file normally offline. But if it clicks on different document, it will wait another ten minutes. User has no problem with txt files, only files that he open with MSoffice… If user work online, there is no problem. Offline file synchronize normally, when user work online.
Anonymous
July 08, 2007
Hi All, I have exhaustingly searched all over to try and find either a solution to our problem, or an alternative way to do what we want; and so far I have not found anything conclusive. This is what we need : -Folder redirection to a Storage Server -Files to be available Offline with as little user interaction as possible -Invisible Synching when logging on or off, as well as when a broken connection has been restored. This was done -My Docs/Desktop was redirected to a Server 2003 share -All GPO objects was set to enable offline files, as well as some sync options. -When looking at the share on the server form the USer machine we need to sync, the offline files tab is there, but greyed out and disabled -When uplugging the nw cable, the Desktop and My Documents are not available. I have played around with all the settings in both user and computer in the GP, but no change. Could this be something on the Server not allowing the caching of files? I am at a loss, and I need to get some sort of plan going soon, as we need to start backing up user profiles. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks
Anonymous
July 13, 2007
Offline files missing: I have a user that uses offline files and syncs to a share on a windows 2003 server. The problem is when the computer is connected to the network all the files are there, when I disconnect the computer from the network the files are still there. When we restart the computer with the network unavialable there are files missing that should be available offline. Any thoughts as to why this is happening? Any help would be appreciated Thank You
Anonymous
July 17, 2007
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Anonymous
July 20, 2007
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Anonymous
July 24, 2007
Hi JH v/d Merwe You need to go to the 2003 server and check the cache settings on the share. Do this by right mouse clicking on the folder that you have shared, then from the context menu select Sharing and Security... Click on the Cache button. Select the caching option that you want.
Anonymous
July 24, 2007
Hi Jake There is a 2GB max size limit on the CSC folder by default. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/904676/en-us on how to change this value
Anonymous
July 24, 2007
Hi Nik First thing to try is to reinitialize your offline files. Go to the Control Panel and double click on the Folder Options applet. Press Control+Shift while clicking the "Delete Files" button, then confirm your selection to begin the reinitialization.
Anonymous
July 31, 2007
Hi, I re initialized my offline files because the file server is not available anymore but the problem is i have lots of files which is cached at the offline files and now i deleted. Can I restore it back again?
Anonymous
August 02, 2007
Hi Again. Well I tried to reinitialize the offline files, Basically I got no response. It prompted my with the normal warning, but never asked to restart basically nothing happened?? Here is the scenario as it stands. We have individual folders on a server in which My documents is pointed to. I made the my documents folder available offline. Later I realized that the folder was not syncing. I decided to attempted a do over buy deleting the files and making them offline again. This where obiously my lack of knowledge in the subject comes in. Now there is no option to make them offline again. The offline file viewer shows the files but the sync agent says no offline files to sync. Help me please!!
Anonymous
August 14, 2007
Hi FrankieG, The 2GB limit is for files created temporarily in the CSC folder. It does not apply to the files of the share marked for offline cache. I too dont know how/why these temp files get created. I've written a tech blog on offline files.. Let me know if it's useful to you.. http://offlinefiles.blogspot.com
Anonymous
August 14, 2007
Hi Nik, How did you delete the cached files? as mentioned in http://offlinefiles.blogspot.com/2007/08/frequently-asked-questions-2.html? If so, after the reboot, offline files should not show the server share as marked for offline because deleting the files in the above way would also clean up the the share entries from its database.
Anonymous
August 30, 2007
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Anonymous
September 07, 2007
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Anonymous
September 21, 2007
Users on my network are experiencing the following problem: Their logon scripts map multiple shared drives, all from a single Netapp fileserver. The mappings include H: (their home directory), P: (public share), and G: (groupdata share), etc. The problem occurs when a user enables offline files on thier PC and configures their home directory (mapped as H:) to synchronize. The synchronization works fine, BUT when the user attempts to access the other shared directories, such as P: (public), or G: (groupdata), they see only the empty root folder, none of the subfolders or contents, even though the drives have multiple subfolders and files, and were mapped at logon. If I disable synchronization of the H: drive, all of the contents of the mapped P and G drives magically are once again visible and available. If you attempt to manually map one of these drives while synchonization of H: is enabled, you receive an error stating the "network drive is not found". I have seen this issue on multiple client machines on my network and so far have been unable find anything to help resolve it. It's been an ongoing issue for more than a few months. Any input at all is greatly appreciated.
Anonymous
November 13, 2007
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Anonymous
November 27, 2007
Got a laptop user that uses the offline folders facility for his my documents area. He's started to get "Access to 'filename' is denied on \serverusersusersnamemy Documentsfolderfolder for any files that he's looked at or created whilst offline. Other laptop users dont have this problem. I've checked share permissions, NTFS permissions and Ownership as per MS User Data and Setting Management White paper and all are OK. Any ideas?
Anonymous
January 29, 2008
I am having an issue where offline files sync just fine except the folder structure does not transfer. example- you have 10 folders- 10 docs each on your network drive. when you sync and look offline all that is there is 100 docs- no folders. we have tried checking the setting for keeping folders when setting up the sync and also tested that our group poicly in active directory was set to do so as well with no change. Has anyone else experienced this? if so what setting needs to be changed to keep the folder structure offline?
Anonymous
February 13, 2008
Hi there, I am reliant on Offline Files. Our server crashed and was rebuilt with the same name, but I had to get a new profile established. Offline Files has always worked beautifully for me until my new profile was established. I do have the option “Always Available Offline”, but I can’t actually select this option. I click to check it, and nothing happens. I right click again, and it’s not selected. Essentially my selection simply won’t stick. If I go through properties and the “Offline Files” tab, again, I can check the option to make available offline, but nothing happens. When I go back in it’s not checked. Here’s a bit of background:

I am running Vista Business version 6 (build 6000) on a Dell Inspiron notebook 1501 with SBS 2003.
I have cleared all the cache
I have disabled offline files, restarted, and made available again to no avail.
I have installed the hotfix found in KB article 935663 (I know this was going overboard as my issue is not permission related, but I was getting desperate)
The cscsvc.dll file is in c:windowsscs and there is a directory called c:windowscsc
I have tried to make files available offline through networking another machine (not a server- another client) in our network with the same problem. We have one other desktop running Vista Business and his computer works fine when trying to Make Files Available online. However, he never had this option set up prior to the server crash. This leads me to believe it’s not a server issue, but an issue specific to my machine.
My queries yeild the following: C:Usersesserd.NEWENGLANDARBOR.000>sc query csc SERVICE_NAME: csc TYPE : 1 KERNEL_DRIVER STATE : 4 RUNNING (STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE, IGNORES_SHUTDOWN) WIN32_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0) SERVICE_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0) CHECKPOINT : 0x0 WAIT_HINT : 0x0 C:Usersesserd.NEWENGLANDARBOR.000>sc query cscservice SERVICE_NAME: cscservice TYPE : 20 WIN32_SHARE_PROCESS STATE : 4 RUNNING (STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE, ACCEPTS_SHUTDOWN) WIN32_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0) SERVICE_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0) CHECKPOINT : 0x0 WAIT_HINT : 0x0 C:Usersesserd.NEWENGLANDARBOR.000>sc qc csc [SC] QueryServiceConfig SUCCESS SERVICE_NAME: csc TYPE : 1 KERNEL_DRIVER START_TYPE : 1 SYSTEM_START ERROR_CONTROL : 1 NORMAL BINARY_PATH_NAME : system32driverscsc.sys LOAD_ORDER_GROUP : network TAG : 9 DISPLAY_NAME : Offline Files Driver DEPENDENCIES : rdbss SERVICE_START_NAME : Sorry to be so detailed. Maybe it's simple. I just wanted to give as much information as possible. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Anonymous
February 21, 2008
John Nov 28 2007: Did you ever get a resolution to your problem? I have sort of the same problem here. If my user works on a file synchronized from the network when offline, or if he creates a new file in a network directory when offline, then synchronization at logon fails with "access" denied. Bizarrely, though, synchronization succeeds at logoff. No other users have this problem, on what seem to be identically configured machines. We're running Windows 2000 Server SP4 and XP Pro SP2 (all updates installed) on the laptop and on the file server being synched to. Does anyone have any thoughts?
Anonymous
March 10, 2008
@Paul: I have the exact same issue on my network. Here's what I've tried so far (hasn't worked for me, but may work for you): ------ Fix #1 ------ http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297684 Change this registry key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServiceslanmanserverparameters] "autodisconnect"=dword:ffffffff ------ Fix #2 ------ Change Slow Link Detection to "disabled" in Registry: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionNetCache] "GoOfflineOnSlowLink"=dword:00000000 ------ Fix #3 ------ Install hotfix KB900387 (you will have to call Microsoft for the patch) Let me know if you ever solve the problem. Cheers!
Anonymous
March 30, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
April 13, 2008
2 Questions:

Is there a way to see why it thought the server was disconnected? Originally, we had wifi networking, and the server would go "offline" (not too much of a problem, except the print and "archive" shares would disappear until I resync'd). I attributed it to a wifi-hit (and it didn't happen very often). Now, I'm using Gig-E, and it doesn't stay connected for > 30 minutes, but the switch doesn't report any errors of any kind for either of the ports.... This behavior is also occuring using the "connect to small business server", even though the "connection" never drops.
Can I make Mobsync more selective as to when it tries? Having it pop-up when I connect to my home lan (wifi) is annoying. I found where I could indicate network connections to sync on, but it doesn't differentiate between different network adapters (I could get away with "Sync on Wired and Connect to SBS2003")...

Anonymous
April 18, 2008
Since this blog is the most likely the best place on the net for Offline files - I thought I add something that some of you might find helpful. With XPSp2 the mobsync /login & /logoff switches are gone, as most of you know. But here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb787862(VS.85).aspx you will find a piece of vbscript code, that will allow to trigger the sync again. I deactivated offline sync on logon and logoff via a GPO (computer policy) and wrote a user logon and logoff script (with just a few lines more to detect network connectivity) based on the code above. Benefit: notebooks directly use offline files and the user will not see the sync dialog when the working outside the corporate network (e.g. home network as questioned in the blog entry above). Sync is still done automatically, when the user reconnects to the corporate network. The next thing I suggest to anyone: If you use Folder Redirection (like we do) Offline files for laptops are mandatory. Make sure to store these folders on a fast server/SAN disks (RAID 1 or RAID 10) and put a quota on it (e.g. 500MB) This makes the sync much faster and people don't get to annoyed with the offline sync anymore. Additionally we now assign a home directory again (fells like old NT4 days), where users have more control if they want to sync or not. The Microsoft SyncToy does a great job there as secondary tool. I hope that helps some readers of this blog :)
Anonymous
April 18, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
April 21, 2008
I'm seeing a similar issue to "Friday, September 21, 2007 12:44 PM by Paul". User has a shortcut to a network share which after time will appear empty or will have partial file/folder listing. Disabling Offline or then re-enabling will solve issue and full listing will return. This is on the same server as his redirected/offline cached My Docs folder. Anyone have a fix?
Anonymous
April 23, 2008
In reference to the script reference posted by Tim Bosinius -- Tim, if I understand you correctly, you have replaced the xp full sync at logon and full sync at logoff with:

A logon script for sync, since it will obviously only run when the DC is available to provide a login script at which point the file server would presumably be available also.
A logoff script for sync with an added check for whether network is present so it doesn't waste time timing out if the network isn't present. This sounds great. Questions:
Can these scripts be updated to only run if the desired file server is present to prevent a network connection alone from triggering the sync?
Does running this script while logged in or during log off show a status display or is it silent/hidden?
Is there any way to use this script instead of the default windows behavior for prompting to synch on reconnect (i.e. when a computer is logged in and then connected to a network) or on idle -- i.e. the ideal would be to 1. make it intelligent enough to check to see if the actual server is present and 2. to make it run automatically and silently (without prompting) Last thing -- I am not a programmer. I opened the link and saw a page referencing "Synchronize Method". Could you give me a hint at how would I would go about using this? I am familiar with creating simple batch scripts. I know these are a lot of questions -- I appreciate any feedback I can get. Thanks

Anonymous
April 28, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 09, 2008
For the Access is Denied posts throughout this blog the information below fixed my problem!! (and it wasn't even a Microsoft Problem!) This only applies if you have Embassy Wave Systems software installed on your PC (I have all Dell PC's and didn't even know this was on there.) Turns out it was the Document Manager portion of the Embassy Wave Systems suite that was impacting file synchronization. The quick way to verify this was to just end the process WavXDocMgr via task manager and then try to sync. When doing this, the sync should work now manually and during logon… no more access denied errors. The service can be disabled via msconfig > startup > uncheck WavXDocMgr and reboot. This might not be the cleanest method but uninstalling the entire suite or just the Doc Manager portion produced Msiinstaller issues. I am sure they could have been resolved via a reinstall/uninstall or manual uninstall. I just cleared the service from startup and rebooted… it did not impact startup by doing so this way. Everything worked fine with CSC and sync after. Forums that led me to troubleshooting the Embassy Wave Systems suite: http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=942215">http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=942215 http://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Microsoft_Operating_Systems/Window... -- mfrancis

mfrancis's Profile: http://forums.techarena.in/member.php?userid=47123">http://forums.techarena.in/member.php?userid=47123 View this thread: http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=942215">http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=942215 http://forums.techarena.in

Anonymous
May 22, 2008
Hi, Hope someone can help? I have user with an XP Pro Sp2 build, the offline folders and files fails to sync using Make Available Offline; the sync never initiates, the transfer wizard never starts (assume this has already run for the user), but this is the key thing.. the intended folder icon never changes to the blue sync arrows. I've tried this with a new user profile, the Xfer wizard start but I’m left in the same situation. I’ve run through the MS article re--initialize CSC… but this has no affect, I’ve also looked at the local GP User / Computer config | Administrative Templates | Network | Offline Files| Options.. no good. I’ve only seen one other forum posting without solution / response. Any guidance would be great… TIA
Anonymous
May 28, 2008
Using Windows XP-SP2 with Windows Server 2003. On one user notebook, we are trying to enable offline folders. Using explorer we can access [Tools]/[FolderOptions] without any problem. We can access all of the tabs on the windows EXCEPT the [Offline Folders] tab. The system "hangs", and the only way to regain access is to reboot. Any thoughts ... without a rebuild! Thanks
Anonymous
May 28, 2008
Wayne Brown you are the man! I worked all day on this, and you nailed it! Thanks billions. My issue was access denied when syncronizing files created while offline. Disabling Dell Wireless Wave Access Document Manager fixed the issue.
Anonymous
June 03, 2008
OK, I have a problem not previously discussed above. I wish to walk away from using file synchronization and delete the CSC files as I have 100GB+ of synchronized file space that I would like to reclaim. I'm fearful of directly deleting the native CSC files without knowing whether there's an approved Windows-based app that needs to manage that. I've scoured MSDN and Microsoft.com, but to no avail. Any ideas whether it's safe to delete the native CSC files? Who has done it successfully? Is it just me, or is it plain stupid to think that noone would want to discontinue the synch and want to delete the old synch'd files. If there's a way to do that, I haven't stumbled across is. Thanks all.
Anonymous
June 03, 2008
Hi Dave - this KB article explains how to delete the CSC files: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;230738
Anonymous
June 05, 2008
Anyone have any ideas for Thormj? We are experiencing similar issues with offline files. Offline files will intermitently show that a server is unavailable while a notebook is docked and wired. Other applications that require network connectivity are not impacted and other drive mappings that don't contain offline files are still available so I know that the network connection hasn't dropped. We were thinking that it my have something to do with our VPN client so we removed it and reset the IP stack, winsock and reinitialized the IP stack, but none of that has worked. Is there any logging or anything we can look at to help troublehsoot? Thanks for your help. Bill
Anonymous
June 08, 2008
We have issues at the moment when saving .docs or moving .docs into an offline folder the computer will just freeze and will require a reboot. we have tried moving the users share, taking it off the DFS, clearing the cache to no avail. A full Rebuild fixes the problem. As it is just .Docs we have tried clearning the template file. Random.
Anonymous
June 10, 2008
I m using a Lan messenger. Some users are in online. But there names are displayed in offiline in my buddy list. How to solve this?
Anonymous
June 14, 2008
Of all my blog posts, the one that generates the most reliable stream of comments is “ User comments
Anonymous
June 16, 2008
We have something weird with Offline Files: When 2 users in the office edit the same file, the second gets the option to overwrite or create a new copy. When they chose the latter option, it is saved correctly on the server, but neither of the 2 editors can see both files. (As neither of them are in the office right now, I cannot verify which one they do see, the original, the copy or each their own version...) People accessing the share directly, can see both copies... I tried searching for similar issues, but that proved impossible due to the sheer number of results returned... Any help/suggestions would be appreciated...
Anonymous
June 16, 2008
We have what may be the same problem as "Monday, June 09, 2008 4:26 AM by PRicho" . We use 2003 Std. Ed. Sp2 Servers, client Laptops are all Toshiba models, with local profiles set by GPO. The My Documents folder is redirected to the Server by GPO. When a Word (Office 2003 inc SP3, 2007 Compatability) document is opened offline it freezes the Laptop, with only a hard shutdown an option. Sometimes if they save the word document whilst online, Word will lock up and eventually take Windows down with it, requiring a hard shutdown. Clearing the CSC cache has not effect. Re-establishing the whole synchronisation process after using CSCcmd to clense the Laptop has no effect. Rebuilding the Laptop has been the only solution. Most of the latest batch of Laptops have developed the problem - after a month or more of use - around 40 all imaged by WDS (Sat Pro A200s of various sub model). However older models of Toshiba Laptops are experiencing the problem right back to Tecra L10s and A120s. Each small group of Laptops connects to its own independant and slightly unique domain server over a city wide area. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Anonymous
July 16, 2008
I have been having recent issues with offline files. Offline files will intermitently show that a server is unavailable while a notebook is docked and wired. Other applications that require network connectivity are not impacted and other drive mappings that don't contain offline files are still available so I know that the network connection hasn't dropped. We were thinking that it my have something to do with our VPN client so we removed it and reset the IP stack, winsock and reinitialized the IP stack, but none of that has worked. Is there any logging or anything we can look at to help troublehsoot? Thanks for your help. Malcolm
Anonymous
October 26, 2008
I'm trying to get detailed debugging information from offline files written to a log file, and the Microsoft support site (KB 225516) says that one must place the 'checked version' of cscui.dll in the system32 folder. I've spent hours subsequently trying to a) find out what a checked version dll is, and b) find out where to get the checked version of cscui.dll. Apparently Microsoft Technical Support will help me out for a whopping $100 or thereabouts! Is there no other way to get this file? And if not, is there any other way of debugging Offline Files? It's not an error that I'm trying to debug, I'm just trying to understand the network usage and calls that it makes. Win 2000 Pro. Any suggestions would be really appreciated.
Anonymous
October 30, 2008
I looked and didn't see this...so I'm just going to ask and am hopefully not duplicating things. I just enabled offline files in vista and it worked fine for to share files. But I also want my wife to be able to share the same files. Basically, I have her and my files (documents, desktop, downloads, pictures, etc) from one computer available offline on another. I access both. I also have the public music folder available. But, when I go to her account she does not have any of these in her sync folder. I went to control panel and they show under the whole computers list...but she does not have access. I figured I can just right click and make them available from her side...but I thought this might make more local copies. This becomes even more important as I need to run quicken against one of these offline files and that needs to be set to run as administrator. So, the admin account will also need to have access to these offline files (I've already handled getting into the admin account...so that is all set). Don't know if it matters, but after I got them available offline I was going to make our documents, pictures, and videos files, as well as the public music, point to the network files. That way all that is nicely linked. Hope that's clear enough...please let me know if you need any more details.
Anonymous
December 12, 2008
We are experiencing similar issues with offline files. Offline files will intermitently show that a server is unavailable while a notebook is docked and wired. Other applications that require network connectivity are not impacted and other drive mappings that don't contain offline files are still available so I know that the network connection hasn't dropped. We were thinking that it my have something to do with our VPN client so we removed it and reset the IP stack, winsock and reinitialized the IP stack, but none of that has worked. Is there any logging or anything we can look at to help troublehsoot? Thanks for your help.
Anonymous
February 25, 2009
If this is a problem, you may want to disable auto-caching on shares hosting these redirected shell special folders, for example “My Pictures”, “My Music”, and “My Videos”. can you explain how to do so ?
Anonymous
February 26, 2009
A user's emailed solution to an earlier problem: "This fixes the mysterious disabled "offline files issue" of years ago. Error message "A recently installed program has disabled the Welcome screen and Fast User Switching" while turning on the Welcome Screen Updated: June 26, 2005 Send your feedback Symptom When you attempt to turn on Fast User Switching or Welcome Screen, you may receive a message stating that a program used CSGina.dll ( or any other DLL ginamsi.dll etc ) to disable the Fast User Switching and the Windows Welcome screen features. The exact error message follows: A recently installed program has disabled the Welcome screen and Fast User Switching. To restore these features, you must uninstall the program. The following file name might help you identify the program that made the change: <DLL filename varies> Cause This issue occurs if a third-party GinaDLL value is set in the registry, thus disabing the Microsoft Graphical Identification and Authentication file (Msgina.dll) automatically. CSGINA.DLL is a filter driver of Cisco Systems VPN Dialer program. The filename may vary depending upon the software that you've installed. Resolution To resolve the problem and restore the Welcome Screen and Fast User Switching, you need to reset the GinaDLL entry using these steps: Click Start, Run and type REGEDIT Navigate to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows NT CurrentVersion Winlogon Backup the key by exporting to a file. In the right pane, right-click GinaDLL, and then click Delete. (You need to remove the whole value, not just its Value Data) Close Registry Editor Automate the above steps with this REG file Download ginadll.reg and save to desktop. Double-click to apply the REG file."
Anonymous
July 30, 2009
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
November 19, 2009
Hello all. I have a question for the group. In the next few weeks, a new server share will be put in place for user personal files that are redirected to them on their local machine. Some of our users have offline files. I understand that csccmd.exe is a tool that can be used on the local machine to connect the offline files database to move the share location, but I was wondering if there was anything that could be done server side? Thanks for any help.
Anonymous
February 17, 2010
I'm using offline files in a networked environment. I have my documents folder on the server set to work offline. I'd like to turn off the work offline feature for some of the folders within the My documents folder; however, when I right click and want to uncheck work offline, that option is greyed out. Is there a way to change your offline settings so that you can reselect the folders or files you want to use offline. Whenever I disable and then re-enable the feature, the My Documents folder is automatically set up to sync. Thanks. Jane
Anonymous
March 30, 2010
re: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 11:10 AM by Jane this depends on the gpo settings defined. if the offline files gpo setting "Subfolders always available offline" is enabled, users do not have the option of excluding the subfolders.
Anonymous
May 04, 2010
Question; I have windows 7. I connect to shares on a windows server. i setup a folder in one of those shares to be made available to me offline... which works great. However when im physically connected to the network and i login and authenticate fine, if someone deletes files in the folder that i have set to be availble offline, those files still show in my explorer. They continue to show until i manually sync or reboot. Question is how do you make that happen in real time while im online? thanks, bsumandig@api.com
Anonymous
October 11, 2010
Hey... I have a desktop with offline folders. When I am logged in as myself(with admin rights) and modify a file within offline folder, this modified file is not available under a different login (user has rights to this folder). It seems like any changes between the users are not synched while the pc is offline. Any idea on how can I make sure that the latest file is always available to all users of this PC? Thanks for your time.
Anonymous
December 19, 2010
I have problems restoring unsynched offline files after a disk crasch. I have been able to restore the c:windowscsc files. Using XP Pro. I have downloaded rktools and in this way got csccmd.exe. From another comment in this blog I have tried mkdir c:recoveredfiles csccmd /extract:\myservermyshare /target:c:recoveredfiles /recurse /onlymodified However, in the csccmd version I have obtained the only options are /ENABLE, /DISABLE, /RESID, /DISCONNECT, and /MOVESHARE. /Extract, /target, /recurse, and /onlymodified are not available (at least it seems so when typing csccmd /?. So... apparently I am doing something wrong here. It would be great to get some clues of how to proceed. Best regards / Marten
Anonymous
April 19, 2011
Hi, could please confirm that my solution i correct? We have have setup offline files in our network by configuring the appropriate GPO's. Basically what it comes down to is that offline is configured by these policies: Computer policy: Configure slow-link mode > Enabled UNC Paths: > \servernamehome$ Latency=0 User policy: Administratively assigned offline files > Enabled Specify network files and folders that are always available offline:> \servernamehome$%username% The problem: When a user logs onto a freshly installed windows 7 SP1 workstation the sync partnership is present. When that users logs off and then another user logs on, there is no sync partnership present for that other user. When that other user goes to his home drive, that user is confronted with the following error: H:Refers to a location that does not exist. A gpresult /r run under that other user shows that all the appropriate GPO's have been applied successfully. I found out that the problem seems to deeper. It appears that if the first user logs on and simply sets its homedirectory offline, then logoff and login as another user, that other user Will not be able to get to his home directory (H:Refers to a location that does not exist error). If you then login as the first user again and simply switch it's homedirectory to online, then logoff and login as the other user the homedirectory of that user can be reached again. Apparently offline files works like this: It takes the the whole \servernamehome$ and puts it offline as a whole, including every folder that is underneath the home$ share, which in our case, includes every homedirectory of every user. This also made me solve the problem. If i simply make the home directory of each user a share and configure offline files to use \servername%username%$, there is no problem. Apparently only "\servershare1" is treated as an independant item that allows it to be switched offline/online without causing another "\servershare2" path to be switched to offline/online. Can you please confirm that my finding are correct? See also this technet post: social.technet.microsoft.com/.../6ad53d1f-c54f-4099-bd6a-8058b6543f2a

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User comments about offline files

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re: User comments about offline files

Wednesday, April 12, 2006 3:53 AM by qwer1304 Offline Files & VPN

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