I said "Ask me before synchronizing items" goddamnit!

I have offline files setup so my laptop synchronizes to a server at my
office. I shut down, hibernate, stand by my laptop (it doesn't matter), go
home, and boot my laptop. I get that computer icon in my system tray saying
"Offline files - Working Offline." Everything works fine. I'm working on
the files from my server copied locally to my computer.

I connect to the VPN at my office so i can get to my Exchange server. About
10 seconds later, that nice computer icon representing my offline working
state silently disappears. I'm now working ONLINE, WITHOUT synchronizing
anything. if i modified an offline file before i connected to the VPN, i'm
now working on a separate OLDER version on the server. Not to mention the
fact that i just DON'T want to work on my large files over the VPN.

Under synchronization settings, i have "Ask me before synchronizing the
Items" checked. under "On Idle" i have "Synchronize the selection items
while my computer is idle" unchecked.

The way it used to work before i reinstalled windows on this computer was i
would connect the VPN and then it would give me the little computer with the
exclamation point or whatever saying "Server is available" or
"synchronization necessary" or something like that. that was cool.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.