Offline files (CSC)

[Andrew Zenz]

Hi all,

Posted a message about this a month ago and didn't get any help. Is there a
CSC guru out there?

One of my client has a Toshiba laptop running Windows XP Pro SP2. There are
3 mapped drives (2 to a Windows 2000 DC and 1 to a 2003 TS).

A few minutes after logon the laptop reports that is offline from the 2000
server. The users offline folder is accessible but the other mapped drive
to the 2000 server is not. The mapped drive to the 2003 TS still works
fine. I synchronise and seconds later it goes Offline again. There doesn't
seem to be any fault with the network adapter.

I have removed the laptop from the domain and rejoined the domain. I have
changed settings in TCP/IP and re-installed SP2. I have scanned for viruses
and spyware and none exist.

What triggers a workstation to go Offline and what is the process that it
goes through to determine when a server is offline, when it is online again.

System: Toshiba Tecra M2, Windows XP SP2, Office 2002, Symantec AV CE v10.

Perhaps someone can assist with a solution?

I am stumped by this one.

TIA, Andrew

 

[WhiteZin2000]

I had a VERY similar issue with a Toshiba laptop and Win2000 server. NO
amount of joining/rejoining the domain or reconfiguring the TCP/IP
components solve our issue. We also found that when the client PC goess into
'offline' mode, if you go to the command line and 'net view' the server's
NetBIOS name, the entries returned are different than if you 'net view ' the
server's FQDN name or IP address. Ironically, if on the client you 'Click
this balloon to synchronize' - the client always seems to re-sync (for a few
minutes).

Using a program called CSCSNIFF (provided by Microsoft), we discovered that
our issue was due to a seemingly harmless change in the share properties
where the client stored their redirected 'My Documents' folder. The change
we made was the shareed resource name to 'users$' from 'users' (in order to
hide this share from those users browsing the network. The secrity
descriptors were identicle and the Domain Policy was properly updated with
the new share point. However the 'You are now working offline' message began
showing up on the Toshiba client laptop (even though the domain policy and
'CSCSNIFF' appeared to show the proper settings.

The way we solved it: recreate the original 'users' share on the server even
though no files/folders reside in the share; and it worked. Microsoft
informed me this was a known limitation of Win2000 server and has been
resolved in Win2003. Perhaps some variation of my solution will solve your
issues.

Good luck! Cheers!

 

[Andrew Zenz]

Hey, thanks for the reply.

Your description fits my situation to a tee.

I ended up moving the users shared folder as part of a data migration and it
solved my problem, as it did yours, although I have no idea what caused the
hiccup in the first place.

Handy to know about that utility too.

Thanks again for the reply.

Andrew