Access is denied when synchronising offline files on laptop

[ranj]

Hi folks

 

Hope everyone is well.

 

I was wondering if someone might have come across this weird problem we been having with one particular user on our network.

 

all of our teacher laptops synchronise with the network, offline file is enabled on their user directories. All of a sudden on one teachers, the offline files is reported access is denied when trying to synchoronise.

 

We would it was a laptop problem so reimaged it, hoping the problem would go away but it still there.

 

Has anyone come across this problem before. Its really weird. I really thought a reimage would solve the problem. on the server side nothing has changed. Her permission to her user area is fine as well.

 

your help is much appreciated

 

thanks

[GlennT]

Have you seen this post...

http://edugeek.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3120

Maybe that will help?

[armadillo]

Hi, I am having excatly the same problem here- after refreshing the servers and migrated all data onto the new servers this summer, I now have around half of staff can't access their home directory through their laptops. I would say around half of staff laptops have the same problem roughly 55 laptops. But Everything works fine from desktop.

 

Any help is appreciated.

 

Thanks in advance.

[ranj]

Hi, I am having excatly the same problem here- after refreshing the servers and migrated all data onto the new servers this summer, I now have around half of staff can't access their home directory through their laptops. I would say around half of staff laptops have the same problem roughly 55 laptops. But Everything works fine from desktop.

 

Any help is appreciated.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

I was shocked on passing to see an old post that i posted over a year ago!

 

basically we sorted this problem

 

Where offline files have suddenly stopped working on some teachers laptops. If when synchronising you get the following error “access is denied” you need to do the following on the users laptop:

 

* Do the files reside in folders with particularly long paths (especially with spaces in them)? If so, try moving the files into another folder or get rid of spaces in folder names.

* If that doesn't work try reinitializing the Offline Files cache. Go into Folder Options...Offline Files...Press and hold Ctrl-Shift and click Delete

 

The offline files cache does tend to become corrupted more often than hoped. If it does, it behaves very erratically, with errors like the one i described. You may also get "the network path could not be found" type errors, even though it's clearly available and other files next to the error-prone ones synchronise fine.

 

Hope that helps you out.

[armadillo]

Thanks RANJ for your reply- the problem we're having is that the users can't access their home folder from the laptops, in this instance is H:\ drive and the share is \\nas\staff\%username%. We never had this problem before and we've been running staff laptops and offline files since 2003, the problem started after we migrated the data etc onto the new servers. Also in the previous file server the home directories were shared and they were accessible via \\nas\%username% as you mentioned slightly shorter path.

 

Any suugestion is appreciated.

[PiqueABoo]

This link to CSCCMD might help, however that version is not downloadable so you will have to hunt around to find a copy.

 

I would run "csccmd /enum" and if that does spew out lots of references to the old share I would then use the /moveshare option.

 

PS: Since CSC is a computer (not per user) thing, if it works on one you might well get away with running on the others via a computer startup script. This isn't something I've ever tried though.

Edited September 9, 2009 by PiqueABoo
PS:

[armadillo]

Hi, Thanks for your reply- I will try it on one laptop tomorrow. I will keep you posted.

[maniac]

Check the permissions on the root share if you're using offline files. If the user does not have read permissions to this share, then offlines files will not work even if they have the correct permissions further up the tree.

 

This knowledge base article may help Users may receive an "Access is denied" error message if you make files and folders available for offline use

 

this caught me out when setting my new system up, as I had permissions in place to stop users browsing the root share, but still allow them direct access to their own folder - this arrangement does not work with offline files.

 

Mike.

[box_l]

are the offline files encrypted?

 

you have to be a local administrator for this to work.

 

it gives the same "access denied" error.

 

BoX

[armadillo]

Thank you all for your replies- I will try all suggestions and will come back to you to let you know how it's going.

[PiqueABoo]

this arrangement does not work with offline files.

 

I'm idly and uselessly wondering if that constraint (which is immediately apparent when play with csccmd i.e. you see the root share has been pinned) is related to my folder quota stats problem.With the latter when you ask about available disk space for a folder-with-a-quota below a share, you always get the value for the folder back at the root of the share.

 

MS blamed the limits of the SMB 1.0 protocol and reckon it's sorted in SMB 2.0 (which you can't get for XP and I'd rather not have anyway right now if that BSOD SMB 20 negotiate exploit works as advertised).

[armadillo]

Hi, just to let you all know that the synch problem is still not resolved after trying all options and I even have Microsoft on the case; as the servers are new and with one year support with 3rd party company with agreement with microsoft.

 

We tried all options and we seem to be running out of solutions.

 

Any advice from you would be appreciated.

Thanks

[BartPe]

So, did you finally find the cause for this one? I'm seeing the same issue in our environment.

[jonathanhaddock]

Morning all!

 

We found this problem a while ago and I have posted the solution on my wiki: Synchronising issues (XP) - Jonsdocswiki

 

To give a quick overview:

According to a MS KB article, users need to be able to traverse the folder structure in which their home area is stored. After granting this permission (it needs to be set via advanced permissions for "this folder only") you should find the problem is resolved. At worst you'll need to re-initialise the client side cache (Re-initialise the Client Side Cache - Jonsdocswiki).