Quirks of Offline Files

[Andrey Tarasevich]

Hello

I have the following issue with Offline Files feature in Windows XP Pro
SP2. I have a network location mapped to drive letter Z: by 'net use'
command, which is executed every time I log in. Recently I marked
several folders on that Z drive for offline use. After that for some
reason the aforementioned 'net use' command started to work in "lazy"
mode: it no longer tries to establish connection to the remote machine
(even though it is fully available), but instead uses the cached local
copy of the files as Z:, i.e. in Z: I can only see the local copies of
folders marked for offline use and nothing else. I want to see
everything I have in the remote folder, i.e. I want to force 'net use'
to actually try to access the network and establish the real connection
to the remote machine (assuming it is available). How can I do that?

The only way to force this I know of is to manually issue a
'Synchronize' command. In this case Windows will actually connect to the
remote machine, perform the synchronization and after that I'll see the
entire remote location as Z: drive. However, this does not last long,
since after a while Windows will drop the connection by itself (even
though the remote machine is still available) and one again Z: will only
give me access to cached data. Another manual 'Synchronize' will restore
the connection, which will be dropped again after a short while. How can
I prevent this behavior and force Windows to keep the connection alive
as long as it is available?

Another [unrelated] bug with offline files is that the slider control
that is supposed to change the percentage of the hard drive used for
offline cache does not work ('Folder Options' dialog, 'Offline Files'
tab). It always stays at 3%. Setting it to any other value doesn't
change anything because the moment OK is pressed in the dialog window
the control will return to 3% position. I wonder whether MS considers
Offline Files an obsolete feature, since they don't even try to fix an
obvious bug in the corresponding GUI?

Best regards,
Andrey Tarasevich

 

[Bernhard Wagner]

Hi Andrey,

I have EXACTLY the same issue as you, but even before SP2, it seems that the
offline file feature has never worked 100% correct before. I also have "My
Documents" redirected to a fileserver, and the computer goes offline without
any reason. My collegues have already gave up using offline files...

MS - we need help!

But I can help you with the cache size slider - it's annoying: the slider
does NOT size the offline cache, but the TEMPORARY offline cache - aka files
that you declare for temporary offline use on the share of the file server.
And also, it's the maximum size of ONE file for ("normal") offline use, so
if you change the slider to 200MB you can't use a file with 201MB for
offline use.

Yours Bernhard W.

Hello

I have the following issue with Offline Files feature in Windows XP Pro
SP2. I have a network location mapped to drive letter Z: by 'net use'
command, which is executed every time I log in. Recently I marked
several folders on that Z drive for offline use. After that for some
reason the aforementioned 'net use' command started to work in "lazy"
mode: it no longer tries to establish connection to the remote machine
(even though it is fully available), but instead uses the cached local
copy of the files as Z:, i.e. in Z: I can only see the local copies of
folders marked for offline use and nothing else. I want to see
everything I have in the remote folder, i.e. I want to force 'net use'
to actually try to access the network and establish the real connection
to the remote machine (assuming it is available). How can I do that?

The only way to force this I know of is to manually issue a
'Synchronize' command. In this case Windows will actually connect to the
remote machine, perform the synchronization and after that I'll see the
entire remote location as Z: drive. However, this does not last long,
since after a while Windows will drop the connection by itself (even
though the remote machine is still available) and one again Z: will only
give me access to cached data. Another manual 'Synchronize' will restore
the connection, which will be dropped again after a short while. How can
I prevent this behavior and force Windows to keep the connection alive
as long as it is available?

Another [unrelated] bug with offline files is that the slider control
that is supposed to change the percentage of the hard drive used for
offline cache does not work ('Folder Options' dialog, 'Offline Files'
tab). It always stays at 3%. Setting it to any other value doesn't
change anything because the moment OK is pressed in the dialog window
the control will return to 3% position. I wonder whether MS considers
Offline Files an obsolete feature, since they don't even try to fix an
obvious bug in the corresponding GUI?

Best regards,
Andrey Tarasevich