OverWorked Posted November 23, 2010 Posted November 23, 2010 Please help! We have a problem where documents saved on a Windows 7 machine are not being written to the server share. A user has just come to me. She is logged on with her account on two machines - one windows 7 and the other XP. On the W7 machine she's created 2 new files and saved them to the share she has full access to - they appear in the share and she can access them. The share is a mapped drive set by GP Preferences. Walked over to the XP machine and the new files are not in the share. The files aren't on the server either. I seems to me that they're only cached on the W7 machine's drive. What is going on? Is this some new W7 feature where it just keeps files locally instead of writing them to the share they're supposed to be on? Thanks.
marekbrad Posted November 23, 2010 Posted November 23, 2010 Heyup Had a similar issue and in the end removed all traces of the libraries (loads o threads on this) and used AD mapping to create a home drive.. all staff are encouraged to make sure students open and save files from thier U drives rather than anywhere else.. also students encouraged to us save as option as belt and braces. Not elegant nor graceful nor efficient but it works.. I refuse to go back to XP!!!!
OverWorked Posted November 23, 2010 Author Posted November 23, 2010 @marekbrad: Thanks. I'll bear that in mind. This folder isn't in a library, it's just a mapped drive. The file hadn't synchronised and was being kept offline. This is despite the offline files feature being disabled in GP for that machine. Attached is the properties for one of the files affected. Clicking sync copied it to the server. I imagine there was some network problem when the file was saved and it was just kept offline with no warning. I need to stop this happening again, or at least get W7 to give the user some warning Thanks.
jlucas Posted November 23, 2010 Posted November 23, 2010 We've had the same kind of problems with Windows 7, documents not being written to home drives correctly, 0kb files etc. This post seems to have helped (I only implemented the reg changes beginning of last week but I haven't had any more calls about it).
psydii Posted November 23, 2010 Posted November 23, 2010 Might not be applicable to your case, but try this: Temporary files do not synchronize correctly to a non-DFS share on a server from a client computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 or The icon of an offline file that you changed in offline mode always indicates that synchronization is successful even when the synchronization fails on a client computer that is running Windows 7 A useful search term in google when looking for CSC issues is: hotfix offline-files "windows 7 Professional " site:microsoft.com It would seem that Offline Files in Vista/7 are very much there to be used, and indeed do stuff by default in the background even if you haven't explicitly asked for it. Given the way user data and settings state are configured in schools, they require deep understanding to avoid tripping over their quirks. Excuse me while I dump some of my open tabs into this thread for later consumption! What's New in Folder Redirection and User Profiles What's New in Offline Files Work Smarter with Offline Files and Shadow Copy - The Official SBS Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs How the synchronization in Windows 7 Offline Files works - Romania Networking Team Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs How to enable Event logging for Offline Files (Client Side Caching) in Windows Vista - Ask the Directory Services Team - Site Home - TechNet Blogs Understanding User State Virtualization Improvements In Windows 7 - Building Community One Brick At A Time - Site Home - TechNet Blogs Microsoft Hey, Scripting Guy! How Can I Work with the Offline Files Feature in Windows? - Hey, Scripting Guy! Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs Better together Series BranchCache part 1 - Microsoft Hong Kong ITPro 's blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs How Windows 7 can make Office users even more efficient - The Productivity Hub - Site Home - TechNet Blogs 1
OverWorked Posted November 23, 2010 Author Posted November 23, 2010 Thanks. It seems like the two MS KB articles may be the answer (I hope). Neither of them exactly describes the scenario I had (but then I don't know how it happened), but they're close enough to look like they might fix it. If it happens again, I'll apply the hotfixes. I'm wary of just doing them anyway as the problem has only happened once and they might break something else. KB 977397 is included in the W7 SP1 RC. The other isn't (yet). It looks like SP1 is likely to fix these, so I'll wait for that to be released via WSUS.
burgemaster Posted December 6, 2010 Posted December 6, 2010 I was about to post a thread regarding the simular problem.... One of our teacher keeps loading a previously created document. working on it for an hour or so, Saving the document. When he next opens the document it is not saved? Sometimes when he uses "Save As" he then tries to load the document later and it is marked as "read only". I "think" that it is something to do with the "Preview Pane".? when this is disabled he can then save it and load it as normal. Will checkout these other hotfixes though
tomazzotta Posted December 8, 2010 Posted December 8, 2010 (edited) what do we need to do to fix this issue... where when a student saves there work on one PC it doesnt save it to there homedrive and i think it saves it locally on the machine? - but only happens very rarely! Edited December 8, 2010 by tomazzotta
OverWorked Posted December 8, 2010 Author Posted December 8, 2010 Right, I'm getting somewhere with this. The files aren't syncing because of conflicts. The properties of the affected file shows the sync error, pressing 'sync now' provides another dialog asking them how they want to resolve the conflict. The user can then resolve it. The problem is that the users aren't getting any warning, presumably because offline files is disabled in GP. I'm not going to enable offline files because that will cause massive network traffic every hour as users log in and out, as well slow down the machines during login. Another thing is that users cannot access the sync center. It shows in the taskbar has having conflicts, but whenever the user click it they get "This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer". This will be becasue of another GP setting done for good reason for restricting XP - but which one? I need to find a way of either:- a) Stopping Windows 7 using offline files completely. or less satifactorily, b) giving the user some warning what conflicts happen so they can resolve them, and allowing them to access the sync center. Any ideas?
OverWorked Posted December 9, 2010 Author Posted December 9, 2010 Some progress... I got them access to the sync center by moving the desktop machine to an OU set up for laptops with offline files. The main difference that I can see is that the machine is now getting the GP setting Allow or Disallow use of the Offline Files feature: Enabled Users can now access the sync center and resolve the conflicts. (These are conflicts that shouldn't be happening in the first place).
OverWorked Posted February 11, 2011 Author Posted February 11, 2011 This may have been fixed, by a revised patch issued last week. See this thread:- http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-7/64826-windows-7-automatic-offline-files-occuring-all-shares-2.html#post631171
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