Redirecting Desktops and Offline Files

[mackster]

Apologies if this has been posted before - I'm sure someone else has encountered this problem before.

 

OK, so Offline Files is a pain, but we finally got a handle on it with Group Policy, so we've got it behaving the way we want (XP only). But we want to start redirecting desktops, because no matter how many times we tell users their desktop isn't backed up, they insist on saving important documents there.

 

The problem we're having now is when we combine the two - when a user who uses offline files logs on to the network after doing some work at home, a message box pops up asking them to close open files. This is before the user has had a chance to do anything, so as far as they're concerned no files are open. This doesn't happen if the machine has been restarted (but laptop users never restart). Now surely plenty of organisations use redirected desktops in conjunction with offline files, so there must be a way around this. I even tried removing mobsync.exe from msconfig to prevent Windows from trying to synchronise at logon, but the message just appeared as soon as the first sync was initiated. I also tried excluding ini files in case desktop.ini was the culprit but no joy.

 

Any ideas?

[Mr.Ben]

Here's how I (sort of) solved it.

 

Basically, I've grouped certain members of Users (Admin, Staff, SMT, Pupils etc) and redirected their Desktops to a Shared, Read Only folder.

 

When they are on the Network they can't put documents onto the desktop at all, it will give an error. However they can do this when the machine is offline - and sometimes do!

 

The result of this is that when they come into work, the folder is redirected and their work magically disappears! (although it is in the offline files cache as a local copy). This causes an inconvienience to the user but......

 

Staff have been informed that this is the case, and I just point them a document explaining this and the reasons why it is not allowed - within a couple of weeks of introduction those with Laptops stopped doing it.

 

I know it doesn't stop the issue, but it does stop the stuff being put up to the network. As a side effect it also allows me to drag a shorcut into the redirected folder and it magically to appear on all of the intended users desktops.

Edited February 25, 2010 by Mr.Ben