Problem Configuring Offline Files in Windows 7 Pro!

Web-Junkie · 22-04-2011, 23:16

Just had some new Dell laptops delivered to my workplace with Vista Home Basic so we PXE booted a pre loaded Win7 Pro image we made onto them which already has all the software we use in the image and set it up as we would our XP machines, put it on the domain and tried to get offline files working but it's changed from XP!!

Anyone have experience with this as we've never setup a win7 machine and thought it would be straight forward, yeah right! We created a new user and test GPO with just the desktop redirected to a share on the server (Server 2008 R2) in the User Config part of the GPO, exactly the same settings as our XP GPOs and when connected to the network the files get redirected to the server correctly, but when offline it doesn't find the desktop and throws up the 'not available blah blah' error! Apparently 'Make available offline' is always enabled by default in Win7 Pro, but to be sure we enabled an option in the User config\AdminTemplate\network\offline files part of the GPO, but still won't find the desktop offline! Strangely, if you type the UNC of the share offline, it finds the share, user folder and the desktop folder with all the files?

We use the redirect like thus: \\share\commonfolder\%username% so all users get their own folder created in the 'commonfolder' of the share! Reading a few forums it seems Win7 doesn't like the %username% variable, but we tried with an absolute path and it did the same! Even trying the 'Sync All' option in Sync Center didn't work, in so much as the desktop is still missing and causes an error when offline!

Anyone have a clue, as we don't?

idi banashapan · 23-04-2011, 00:10

I use the %username% variable for mapping drives on win7 through AD and it's fine. What you need to do in Win7 for offline files though is ensure you get the client to index the location first. Offline files for folder redirection will then work.

Web-Junkie · 23-04-2011, 00:44

I thought indexing of offline files/CSC was on by default? I've just remoted in and can't see any indexing options in the GPO to see if it's turned off? I'm in work Tuesday so I'll have to check the laptop then to see if indexing is setup or not, thanks for giving me somewhere to look!

idi banashapan · 23-04-2011, 08:22

What we ended up having to do was map a drive to the location you are going to redirect to, manually make that location available offline, then redirect the Documents area to that area using the full path (not the newly added drive letter). Manually making the area available offline makes it work. You can test this by not adding as a drive but manually trying to redirect the Documents folder to a network location. Windows 7 will throw you an error saying it cannot use the location because it's not indexed. It WON'T show you this error though if you are trying to redirect automatically in the background - it just wont redirect!! Which is handy!!

craigj2k12 · 23-04-2011, 17:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by idi banashapan

What we ended up having to do was map a drive to the location you are going to redirect to, manually make that location available offline, then redirect the Documents area to that area using the full path (not the newly added drive letter). Manually making the area available offline makes it work. You can test this by not adding as a drive but manually trying to redirect the Documents folder to a network location. Windows 7 will throw you an error saying it cannot use the location because it's not indexed. It WON'T show you this error though if you are trying to redirect automatically in the background - it just wont redirect!! Which is handy!!

re-directing the documents to a network location can be done in group policy, and from what i can see everything else can be done in a script, so depending on how many computers there are (you only said "some") it wont be that much of a daunting task

idi banashapan · 23-04-2011, 18:50

Yes we redirected via gpo too. We also have a mix of xp an W7 and found, like stated, xp was fine but W7 behaves differently due to the necessity to index first

southwell · 19-05-2011, 18:00

With our environment I have enabled offline files with the %username% function as specified above, but i do not redirect documents. One main reason is certain installers like 3g dongles, etc, want My Documents to be the C: drive.
Instead i setup Shlib.exe (a download can be found, run with switches) to add the network path of the users home drive to the Library area, then default all open/save commands from Office, etc, to default to there.
You keep your C: My Documents, and users don't tend to see it.
Hope this makes sense, i can post snippets of my GPO's if needed.