Hello there, I'm in a quite complicated situation I guess: * I'm using offline files, and I went offline for some days (not in office) and made changes to some files and created new files in the cached directory. * the machine I was working on physically broke (not the hard drive) * now I need access to the (important!!!) files from the hdd of the broken machine by using this HDD as an external one, but they are somewhere in the offline cache. (running a different installation of windows 7 on a completely different system) -> can I get access to these files? how? thanks for ideas :) philipp

Given the hardware failure it is possible the work has been lost. I am not sure where off-line files are stored as I use a different strategy called sync. I use Live Mesh. This way if a machine dies there is a complete machine waiting to take over. Try using Google to find the location of off-line files My MVP is for the Windows Desktop Experience, i.e. Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 IT Remote Assistance is available for a fee. I am best with C++ and I am learning C# using Visual Studio 2010 Developer | Windows IT | Chess | Economics | Hardcore Games | Vegan Advocate | PC Reviews

If you can boot with the system on that HDD, you can certainly get the data. Try to manually add the system to Boot Manager. You can use third party tools like EasyBCD. If the tool cannot detect the system on the HDD as an available system, you may wait until your computer is fixed.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Thanks for your answers. I got it now :) I first tried Arthurs suggestion and used Easy BDC to create the Boot manager entry. But I couldn't boot the system and got a bluescreen instead. Tried all the avaliable options like safe mode etc.. Then I tried Vegan Fanatics way to go. I remembered that I once relocated the Cache diretory with this HowTo (to my second partition): http://www.mydigitallife.info/2010/01/29/how-to-relocate-or-move-offline-files-client-side-caching-location-in-windows-7-or-vista/ I wasn't very optimistic because I couldn't open these folder in the system which created them. But from my new system I could open them after I took ownership with the "Take Ownership" registry entry, and could access the files. Yeah :) Thanks from a vegan.