Windows 7 My Docs redirection and Offline Files

[Jedis]

Hello,

 

We are having an intermittant sync problem with several users.

 

Basically, on the SAN, every user has a personal folder that they can save their files. First off, we map their network drive and then choose the option to "Always Available Offline" - and wait for the files to sync and be indexed. Then, I add the network share to the My Documents library and removed the existing My Docs and Public Docs entries from the library list.

 

This works fine for 99% of my users. However, some of them have become desynced. I have someone who has 3 laptops - all three of them are having sync issues with the server. Files edited on one laptop are not being synced back to the network drive. Therefore, he has different versions of files across all three devices.

 

What would have caused this to happen and how can I correct it without data loss? When the laptops are out of the office, they do need to be connected to the VPN in order to access the files on the network drive. He tells me he always connect to the VPN. If this is the case, why aren't the files syncing? Is there a better way to set this up than we have it now? How do I stop this from happening in the future?

 

Any help is greatly appreciated! I am at a loss of what to do, short of gathering the contents from each laptop and going through each file one by one, looking for the files with the latest version.

[robyholmes]

I know only a little about offline files so these are just some basic idea you might have tried already.

 

First, you should be able to run a manual sync (Right click, sync all) and in Windows 7 there is a conflict list which helps you decide which files to keep, or keep both etc. It would be a case of running them like so on each laptop; 1, 2, 3, 2, 1 to get them all in sync.

 

Offline files might also fail to sync over the VPN as it is classed as a slow link. This can be set in group policy and it should also give you the default slow link speed in there so you can gauge if that's the problem.

[ricki]

Hi

 

I dont like syncing files unless absolutely needed it can eat up a lot of band width and cpu time. I have also had problems with large files.

 

This was the document I used to set it up in gpo Configuring Group Policy for Offline Files: Group Policy and Configuring New Offline Files Features for Windows 7 Computers Step-by-Step Guide

 

I used the following before I gave up on it.

 

Synchronize all Offline Files when logging on

Synchronize all Offline Files before logging off

Configuring Background Sync

Allow or disallow use of the Offline Files feature

Default cache size

At logoff, delete local copy of users offline files

I also had to put on a slow link detection

[Jamo]

Hello,

 

We are having an intermittant sync problem with several users.

 

Basically, on the SAN, every user has a personal folder that they can save their files. First off, we map their network drive and then choose the option to "Always Available Offline" - and wait for the files to sync and be indexed. Then, I add the network share to the My Documents library and removed the existing My Docs and Public Docs entries from the library list.

 

This works fine for 99% of my users. However, some of them have become desynced. I have someone who has 3 laptops - all three of them are having sync issues with the server. Files edited on one laptop are not being synced back to the network drive. Therefore, he has different versions of files across all three devices.

 

What would have caused this to happen and how can I correct it without data loss? When the laptops are out of the office, they do need to be connected to the VPN in order to access the files on the network drive. He tells me he always connect to the VPN. If this is the case, why aren't the files syncing? Is there a better way to set this up than we have it now? How do I stop this from happening in the future?

 

Any help is greatly appreciated! I am at a loss of what to do, short of gathering the contents from each laptop and going through each file one by one, looking for the files with the latest version.

 

 

What is the reason Offline Files gives for the sync conflict. I sometimes get "a file was changed on the server and the client" was something to do with Google Chrome not playing nice!

 

What file server you using? Is it Windows?

[Jedis]

Hi

 

I dont like syncing files unless absolutely needed it can eat up a lot of band width and cpu time. I have also had problems with large files.

The only way I could include a network drive in the My Docs library was to have it sync the files offline first...

[jtidd]

how do make that option available "Make files available offline"

 

I have a laptop that is used by a staff member and even if i login as admin i cannot use sync centre.

 

Windows 7 x64.

 

We have no GPO's allocated to this laptop

 

Help

[Jamo]

on the client station run GPResult /h N:\pathicanwriteto.html

 

Will show you what is going on, could be a local policy.

[jtidd]

thanks for this and i have compared 2 HTML from the same laptops in the same OU and nothing is different.

 

The only difference i can think of is the laptop that does not have the sync option available is that there is a VPN connection setup, but they connect and dissconnect from this when need be?

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks again

[Jamo]

Is it a particular user? Have you checked the user shares on the server for allowing offline caching?

[jtidd]

i have A VPN Connection setup on a windows 7 x64 laptop and i cannot use sync centre as the option is not available?

 

I have it in the same OU as another laptop of the same model and the other laptop works fine.

 

I have run gpresult /h on both laptops and there is no difference.

 

Do you think it could be the VPN?

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks

 

James

 

Many Thanks