Windows Offline Files Survival Guide Helge Klein. Windows Offline Files have a bad reputation. Many an administrator can tell a story where Offline Files caused issues that sometimes even required a reinstallation of the affected PC. But Microsoft has gradually improved the functionality and ironed out many of the bugs. Today in Windows 7 SP1 with all post SP1 fixes Offline Files is a technology that still has its problems, but can be used in production if you are adventurous. This article lists the gotchas I am aware of. Game Pc Snipe on this page. Please note Although this article originally targeted Windows 7, most if not all of its content applies to Windows 8, too. Documentation. If you want to know what is really going on under the hood, you are mostly on your own. The documentation Microsoft provides is not detailed enough to implement Offline Files in larger production environments. Nor does it help much if things do not work the way you think they should be working. Configuration. In enterprise environments, Offline Files are configured via Group Policy, the relevant node is Administrative Templates Network Offline Files. Caution Most settings do not apply to Windows 7, but to older operating systems. In the computer part, only 1. Windows 7. In the user part only 2 out of 1. Tip Set a filter in Group Policy Management Console that only includes settings for Windows 7. Logging. Offline Files messages are logged to a well hidden part of the event log only Application and Services Logs Microsoft Windows Offline. Files. By default, only an Operational log is there, but if you enable Show Analytic and Debug Logs in View menu, you also get logs called Analytic, Debug and Sync. Log. Each of those can be and has to be enabled separately. Out of these logs, Sync. Log is the most interesting. In it you can find one entry per synchronized file. Analytic and Debug have always been empty during my tests. Readability of the logs generated by Offline Files is generally bad. Many messages are cryptic and difficult to interpret. Architecture. Modes Online, Slow Link and Offline. Ive looked all over for and I cant figure it out. My css files seem to be blocked by IIS7. My site displays them when I use the ASP. NET Development server, but. If youre interested in debugging a tool or finding out why a certain program keeps crashing there is no way around opening DMP dump files. In this guide. Offline Files have four modes of operation Online. Offline Files transition between the three modes online, slow link and auto offline depending on connection speed. The user can always override the automatic mode selection by manually switching to manual offline mode. To determine the connection speed two pings with default packet size are sent to the file server. Delete Windows 7 Debug Dump Files Ok To DeleteIf the average round trip time is below 8. Windows 7 or 3. 5 ms Windows 8, the connection is put into online mode, otherwise into slow link mode. The latency value of 3. Group Policy setting Configure slow link mode. Initial Logon Synchronization. When a user first logs on to a computer, initial synchronization occurs in the background. Once the initial synchronization has completed, the offline files icon in the notification area of the system tray is displayed Once initial synchronization has completed, logon synchronization is attempted 5 minutes after every logon. The default delay of 5 minutes can be changed by setting the following registry value Key HKEYLOCALMACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrent. VersionNet. Cache. Value name Agent. Fill. Period. Min. Value type REGDWORDAllowed value data 1 1. Reads, Writes and Synchronization. In online mode, changes to files are made on the file server as well as in the local cache this induces a performance hit see this article for details. Tv Theme Tune Wav Files'>Tv Theme Tune Wav Files. Reads are satisfied from the local cache if in sync. In slow link mode, changes to files are made in the local cache. The local cache is background synchronized with the file server every 6 hours Windows 7 or 2 hours Windows 8, by default. This can be changed through the Group Policy setting Configure Background Sync. In auto offline mode, all reads and writes go to the local cache. No synchronization occurs. Visio 2007 For Window 7 32 Bit. In manual offline mode, all reads and writes go to the local cache. No synchronization occurs by default, but background synchronization can be enabled through the Group Policy setting Configure Background Sync. Permissions. Offline Files do not require any special permissions on the file server. The permissions listed in MS KB2. Specifically, Everyone, Local System and Creator Owner need not be granted permissions, neither on the share nor in the file system. Microsoft recommends, however, to only use Offline Files for paths where only one user has write access in order to prevent synchronization conflicts that invariably arise if multiple users can edit different copies of a document at the same time. The only valid multi user scenario would be a read only directory used to push out things like static documentation to the users. Permissions are synchronized to the offline cache, too. If a user has read access on the file server, he has read access in offline mode nothing more. Cache size management. Files that were cached automatically are removed on a least recently used basis if the maximum cache size is reached. Files that were cached manually are never removed from the local cache. When the total local cache size limit is reached and all files that were cached automatically have already been removed, you can not make files available offline until you specify a new limit or delete files from the local cache by using the Offline Files control panel applet. The default limit for the Offline Files cache size is 2. Offline Files cache is located typically C WindowsCSC. The cache size can be configured through the Group Policy setting Limit disk space used by Offline Files. Encryption. The Offline Files cache can be encrypted using EFS. If enabled, EFS encrypts the files on a per user basis. If a user does not already have an EFS certificate, a new one will be generated on the fly. Caution when a users password is reset, the EFS key is discarded and cached Offline Files become invalid files that have not been synchronized yet are lost. Everything else needs to be re downloaded. Recommendations. Network Share Configuration. Availability of Offline Files can be controlled via caching options of network shares. Make sure that the Offline settings of the share are not configured to disable Offline Files. Bad No files or folders from the shared folder are available offline. Good Only the files and folders that users specify are available offline. Use with caution All files and programs that users open from the share are automatically available offline. Optimize for performance has no effect on computers running Vista or newer. If you are using DFS, make sure that the DFS root shares are configured correctly, too. Software Versions. By all means, use the latest version of Windows and install every patch related to networking and Offline Files you can get your hands on. Microsoft releases new patches for Offline Files regularly. Monitor the KB for new articles and subscribe to this blogs feed blogs. If you have very long logon times in conjunction with folder redirection it might be due to a bug that is described in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 2. You encounter a long logon time after you enable the Do not automatically make redirected folders available offline Group Policy setting in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2. R2. Install the patch that is available on the articles web page and the problem should go away. Resetting the Offline Files Cache.