Automatic Syncing of Offline Files in Vista

[Guest]

I have a few questions and concerns about the automatic syncing of offline
files in Vista.

1) Why does the sync center not count an automatic sync on the status under
the last sync was performed on x/x/xxxx?
2) Why does the sync center icon not animate when an automatic sync is in
progress? It also appears that if errors occur during an automatic sync they
are not reported on the sync center system tray icon until a full manual or
scheduled sync is performed.
3) Is it recommend to schedule a sync even though it automatically syncs
when you are back online? So far I'm having to setup our Vista computers
this way to make sure we don't miss errors related to syncing. I've been
using the sync at lock and sync when idel for 15min.

Thanks,
Ryan

 

[Shubhankar Sanyal [MSFT]]

Answers inline

I have a few questions and concerns about the automatic syncing of offline
files in Vista.

1) Why does the sync center not count an automatic sync on the status under
the last sync was performed on x/x/xxxx?

The sync center status is only for user initiated syncs. The sync center does not have enough context to throw up errors for a sync that happens in the background.

2) Why does the sync center icon not animate when an automatic sync is in
progress? It also appears that if errors occur during an automatic sync they
are not reported on the sync center system tray icon until a full manual or
scheduled sync is performed.

As before. This is a limitation of Sync Center

3) Is it recommend to schedule a sync even though it automatically syncs
when you are back online? So far I'm having to setup our Vista computers
this way to make sure we don't miss errors related to syncing. I've been
using the sync at lock and sync when idel for 15min.

In most cases, this is not required. What kind of errors are you expecting from your sync? If it is only conflicts, then those do show up in Sync Center even after a background sync.

 

[Guest]

Shubhankar,

Thanks for the answers. On #3 where you wrote "In most cases, this is not
required. What kind of errors are you expecting from your sync? If it is only
conflicts, then those do show up in Sync Center even after a background
sync."

I don't really know what kind of errors I might get. I'm glad to hear that
conflits show up at least! Here is what happened that makes me concerend
about this behavor. I had setup a Vista laptop that was using offline files
on a 2003 server share that did not have full control on the share
permissions, this was causing "Access Denied" errors on random files during
the sync process. We did not even realize this was happening for several
days. Until we noticed .tmp files appearing everywhere and performed a
manual sync.

I just think it would be a benefit to all Vista users if the Automatic syncs
were tracked somehow by the sync center, or even logged in the Application
log. It would assit in troubleshooting errors at the very least. Just
another scenero that I've had occur already is that one of our brand new
Vista laptops sometimes take a long time after login for the hard drive to
stop loading. Upon using Process Monitor to view what was actually going on
we discovered that a sync was in progress, if the sync center icon was moving
we would not have had to spend time troubleshooting that and wondering what
was slowing down the laptop.

Thanks,
Ryan