Files not showing up in networked drive
I have mapped drives on a Windows 7 box. The server is running 2008 Standard. We scan files into a mapped drive, but they don't immediately show up on other computers when opening the mapped drive. Is there a refresh rate? If so, how can it be changed? It usually works if I have the user do a F5 or right click and click refresh. Allen
November 26th, 2010 11:30am

Hi, This issue may be caused by the Automatic refresh folder. You may kindly refer to the following steps: 1. Open your Windows Explorer, and click organize. 2. Click Folder and search Option. 3. Under the General Tab, please check the box before “Automatically expand to current folder”. If the issue persists, please try to disable the folder Index, please kindly refer to the following steps: 1. Click Start Menu, then type Offline files, then click Manager Offline Files in the search result. 2. Then check whether you enable offline files, if so, please disable it to have a try. In addition, can you advise me the following things: 1. How other computers access the shares? Are they via mapped drive or access directly ? 2. Are the new components able to be viewed immediately on the local computer ? Also, please kindly try the following steps: 1. Disable Remote differential Compression. 2. Disable Auto-Tuning. 3. Disable SMBV2.
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November 29th, 2010 4:28am

Hi, This issue may be caused by the Automatic refresh folder. You may kindly refer to the following steps: 1. Open your Windows Explorer, and click organize. 2. Click Folder and search Option. 3. Under the General Tab, please check the box before “Automatically expand to current folder”. If the issue persists, please try to disable the folder Index, please kindly refer to the following steps: 1. Click Start Menu, then type Offline files, then click Manager Offline Files in the search result. 2. Then check whether you enable offline files, if so, please disable it to have a try. In addition, can you advise me the following things: 1. How other computers access the shares? Are they via mapped drive or access directly ? 2. Are the new components able to be viewed immediately on the local computer ? Also, please kindly try the following steps: 1. Disable Remote differential Compression. 2. Disable Auto-Tuning. 3. Disable SMBV2. Hi, I did the organize, folder / search option, as well as automatically expand... They are NOT set up as offline files, I checked that. All computers are mapped to the S: drive. Some can see them right away, some it takes a reboot. When I navigate (on any of the computers) using the UNC path, all files are visable. As far as your last three steps, I don't understand what that means. Also, a correction to my original post, F5 or refresh does not make them show up, only a reboot. Thanks, Allen
December 3rd, 2010 3:36pm

Hi Allen-CCWTech Have you had any solution to this error? I'm having the exact same problem. Some users can view the files, some cannot - however if they log off the server and log onto another terminal server - they can. Also, using the full UNC name works. Very strange. If you have any solution, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks.
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December 10th, 2010 4:45am

Hi Allen-CCWTech Have you had any solution to this error? I'm having the exact same problem. Some users can view the files, some cannot - however if they log off the server and log onto another terminal server - they can. Also, using the full UNC name works. Very strange. If you have any solution, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks. No, not yet unfortunately. Please post here if you find anything as well.
December 10th, 2010 9:07am

I too am seeing this exact same problem. Enviroment: Win7 pc connecting to Server 2008 standard through a mapped drive letter. New files created on a mapped drive letter do not show up. If I disconnect the drive letter and re-map the drive letter to the UNC the files then show up. This allowed me to create a batch file with a shortcut on the users desktop to temporarily fix the problem until I can find a permanent fix. Disconnect share first net use P: \\Server\Share /disconnect reconnect to share net use P: \\Server\Share /presistent:yes THe new files are now visable. I would suspect the Microsoft has a hotfix available.Kevin
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December 10th, 2010 1:04pm

Unfortunately that's not something I can just have my users doing all the time.
December 10th, 2010 3:44pm

A better temporary fix, which works for me - is to get my users to hit F5 which refreshes the folder.
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December 13th, 2010 8:45am

"...F5 or refresh does not make them show up, only a reboot." That doesn't work I'm afraid.
December 13th, 2010 7:29pm

This issue persists, any ideas?
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December 21st, 2010 7:11pm

I am facing a similar issue wherein users in US are able to see the files on the share whereas users in India are unable to see any file even after doing a F5 etc. Any help is really appreciated.
December 27th, 2010 12:09am

Hello, I have the same issue with a Windows Server 2008 R2 fileserver and Windows 7 clients. If a network scanner upload files via SMB to the fileserver, the users doesn't see any new files until they reboot the Windows 7 clients. Thats very strange... Regards Reto
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January 25th, 2011 5:37am

I have made several tests. We can see the new file on the share with powershell, but not in explorer: After a restart, we can also see the file in the explorer. Thanks and regards Reto
January 25th, 2011 8:17am

Same problem here in two offices. Did anyone find any solution?
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February 9th, 2011 5:14am

Yep same problem here too :( ... Can't find anything on the internet about this... I'm wondering if its lagging permissions if there's such a thing because our AD server is through a VPN on the internet - anyone else have this setup? EDIT: I have a feeling this is related to SMB2 - found an article here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1887732/file-open-fails-initially-when-trying-to-open-a-file-located-on-a-win2k8-share-bu EDIT2: Another link to the same issue with a SMB2 reference http://www.laslow.net/2011/01/31/server-2008-r2-and-windows-7-client-smb2-share-refresh-issue/ EDIT3: After a week of running without SMB2 the issue hasn't shown up ... so while this isin't ideal due to the possible preformance impact its definitely fixed the problem... Microsoft REALLY needs to address this...
March 1st, 2011 9:09pm

I have disabled SMB2 on the servers and workstations which made the problem go away. I have been running with SMB2 disabled shortly after my first post here in December 2010 and have NOT seen the problem re-occur.Kevin
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March 5th, 2011 11:45pm

I have disabled SMB2 on the servers and workstations which made the problem go away. I have been running with SMB2 disabled shortly after my first post here in December 2010 and have NOT seen the problem re-occur. Kevin What are the implications of disabling this?
March 7th, 2011 11:16pm

SMB2 Basically is better performance and beter security but if it does not work right no improvement matters. http://www.snia.org/images/tutorial_docs/Networking/JimPinkerton-SMB2_Big_Improvements_Remote_FS_Protocol-v3.pdf I have not seen any negative impact on my network with 5 various server 2008 flavors, SQL server 2008, terminal server 2008 and 50+ clients. All this running on a managed switched gigabit network. Kevin
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March 9th, 2011 12:31am

I am still experiencing this issue. Windows 7 SP2 (fully patched) client connecting to a mapped drive on a Storage Server 2008 SP2 (fully patched). Browsing to the folder using UNC works. As a matter of fact after browsing to the folder using UNC the file showed up in the mapped drive. Disabling SMB2 is not an acceptable workaround for me.
August 24th, 2011 5:10pm

Has anyone figured out how to resolve this? We're seeing this too, Windows 7 clients connecting to Server 2008 R2 - each fully patched.
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October 12th, 2011 3:37pm

Did you try setting DirectoryCacheLifetime to 0 as one of the articles mentioned above suggested? The length of time that the files aren't visible would seem to preclude that as the problem, but curious if changing it had any impact with SMB2 active. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff686200(WS.10).aspx
October 12th, 2011 5:07pm

Did you try setting DirectoryCacheLifetime to 0 as one of the articles mentioned above suggested? The length of time that the files aren't visible would seem to preclude that as the problem, but curious if changing it had any impact with SMB2 active. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff686200(WS.10).aspx I think i tried this a year ago when the problem first arose.... I'm not willing to try it again on a live system since disabling SMB fixed the issue... I just wish Microsoft would even acknowledge that this issue exists!.... Until then we are stuck using SMB1 which is slower over VPN etc For us the SMB2 problem has more implications than just files not appearing on the drive - it also affects the software package PBBI Mapinfo which uses flat file databases and tracks record locks by checking the last modified stamp.. but if the files aren't showing up and other people are working on the same database it leads to corruption... disabling SMB2 fixed this completely along with the issue of files not shownig up
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October 12th, 2011 7:14pm

We are experiencing the same issue but I don't want to disable SMB 2.0 for 2 reasons - 1. I've seen people reporting that offline files won't work, and 2. we don't want to get slower file transfer speeds etc by going back to SMB 1.0. Surely Microsoft should have a fix for this by now? SMB 2.0 has been around for quite a while now... Oh and I looked at the reg keys Scott mentioned (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff686200(WS.10).aspx) but considering it says the default values are 10 seconds and 5 seconds I don't think this is what is causing it (as we can wait for much longer than that before the files appear, and usually just resort to pressing F5 to refresh). My website: www.cjwdev.co.uk My blog: cjwdev.wordpress.com
October 18th, 2011 9:52am

Hi Everyone, Unfortunately I have found a side-effect of disabling SMB2 on our Server 2008 server.... it causes BSOD issues with rdbss.sys and mrxsmb10.sys when viewing JPEG files using windows photo viewer and also using 7-Zip to extract files... when using a Network drive that is locally mapped back to the same server.... This configuration is because the server in question is a terminal server & file server... As documented here http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/itprovistasecurity/thread/97657c43-de53-43b2-9cc0-3d9f6fe7dd6e So that's just something to be aware of if your disabling SMB2 to fix this
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November 9th, 2011 7:50am

I am having the same problem on my 2008 server and win7 clients. any fixes??
November 14th, 2011 12:38pm

I'm also having this issue. I do not want to disable SMB2. In my case, we scan to our own network drives. For a particular user, when there was a file that was scanned in, the number of files in the folder when viewing from the server was N, but I noticed that from the user's computer that couldn't see the file, it showed up that there were N-1 files in the user share.
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November 17th, 2011 3:20pm

1 year later and Microsoft hasn't fixed it. Maybe we'll see a fix on Server 8, but of course something else will break. I have seen this issue on several servers in different customer sites. Very annoying. You can replicate the issue pretty easily by droping a file into a network share using an IP based UNC path ie: \\172.16.50.23\Share, then going to a Computer Name based UNC path ie: \\ComputerName\Share and whala no file.
November 28th, 2011 9:36am

One of my clients is also experiencing the same issues. Windows 7 Pro SP1 x64 fully patched connecting to a Windows Server 2008 mapped network drive. Direct connection via UNC does not correct the issue either. What gives? This is really creating issues with scanned files through Sharescan. People are scanning files 5-6 times because they don't "see" the file in their scanned directory. MS, are you listening?
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February 2nd, 2012 10:48am

What scanner do you have ? Maybe the SMB2 client there is buggy and it is not a primary Windows problem. I have the same problem. The scanner vendor is Ricoh.
February 6th, 2012 3:55pm

Hi Everyone- I too am looking for a fix for this, but I wanted to let you know from our troubleshooting that there appears to be a shorter way of making the files show up. If you notice that files are not showing up after transferring them to a network share, you can restart the service "Windows Search" (Windows 7) on the affected client PC, and the file shows right up! We have had this problem for awhile, and everytime it appears to happen, this service restart makes it show up. I cannot speak to other environments though, so I hope it works for you as well. The alternative is to wait about 10-20 minutes for the file to show up on its own. I figure it's something to do with the file indexer, but I haven't found much that would indicate there is a work around other than disabling SMB2 (yuck). Hope this gets addressed SOON from MS.
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February 15th, 2012 3:45pm

I found the answer to this in my environment http://shammyowens.blogspot.com/2012/02/windows-2008-r2-shared-files-do-not.html removing 2 explorer keys fixed the problem for us.
February 16th, 2012 5:45am

Just wanted to weigh in and say that I checked on the registry keys mentioned in the blog posting shamster mentions, and those keys are not present on our server. We have also been struggling with this issue for some time. Running 64-bit Windows Storage Server Standard 2008 SP2.Shaun
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February 16th, 2012 9:12am

I have the same issue in my environment as well. Server 2008, with Win7 clients. It is only an issue for _SOME_ of my users, and we have xerox scanners by the way.
February 16th, 2012 1:26pm

I have the same issue. Windows Server 2008 R2, Window 7 x64 and Windows 7 x32. We have TOSHIBA and TA scanners, but scanned images are sent to destination folder using FTP protocol.
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February 22nd, 2012 4:09am

We're using Xerox scanners here, that is where we're having the issue (users scan documents to a network share using the Xerox machine). We're using FTP - I've tried using SMB instead but have the same problem that way as well. This was not a problem until we moved from Server 2003 to 2008.Shaun
February 29th, 2012 10:27am

Can we please stop talking about scanners.... this problem is completely unrelated to scanners... we don't have any scanners and we have this problem... which i have fully documented in my other posts above (as well as unexpected side effects of disabling SMB2 on a terminal server - e.g. causing some programs to BSOD when acccessing a locally mapped network drive) .... I just can't believe that Microsot won't acknowledge it!
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February 29th, 2012 6:15pm

They are saying scanners, but what you should really be taking from the comment is their method of file transfer. By default most scanners will use SMB, so simply interpret their message that way and you can still see the trend of SMB file transfers to a Server 2008 File Server is where this issue seems to persist. We are having the same issue, but only with some users. When files are transferred to a network share via SMB (UNC, or mapped) The files will occasionally not show up for some users. Another user can open the same location and the files are listed. I went as far as completely replacing a system for one of our users (win7 32bit to win7 64bit, fresh installation, new hardware, etc.) and the issue STILL persists. I do not think disabling SMB2 is an option for our environment, since we cannot have the BSOD and reboots occuring on our TS server as mentioned above. It could be worth testing in our non-production environment - but I can't reproduce the issue consistently there like I can in the real world. I would hate to resort back to older technology just to get something working on a new system. Still nothing from microsoft.
March 9th, 2012 2:19pm

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters] "DirectoryCacheLifetime"=dword:00000000 (for 64bit) worked for us. Daniel
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March 9th, 2012 4:06pm

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters] "DirectoryCacheLifetime"=dword:00000000 (for 64bit) worked for us. Daniel
March 9th, 2012 4:06pm

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters] "DirectoryCacheLifetime"=dword:00000000 worked for us. Daniel
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March 9th, 2012 4:06pm

Has anyone resolved this problem!! Pretty annoying that a reboot is the only option at this time. We, too, noticed this once we went to server 2008. Our shared network drive (we receive faxes in this folder) takes up to 15+ minutes for the folder to refresh for users to see the files. VERY FRUSTRATING!!!
March 29th, 2012 9:12am

Yep the solution is to disable SMB2 ... it's the only way.... Microsoft has pretty much ignored this.
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March 29th, 2012 5:24pm

I am facing the same problem here. Win2008R2 sp1 server with Win7 sp1 clients. I can reproduce the problem with one particular application: MS Dynamics NAV. Two users are saving files from that application to a file share and other users are reading those files. I created a test VM with Windows server 8 beta and instructed the users to use a share from that server from now on. Since this change (about a month ago) the problem has not occurred. Although it's not ready for production, it might be worth looking at Win8.
March 30th, 2012 4:29am

I have same problem with Samba server (!), so it looks like not W2K8R2 server problem, but Win7 client problem.
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April 3rd, 2012 1:08pm

I have same problem with Samba server (!), so it looks like not W2K8R2 server problem, but Win7 client problem. Now that's interesting! - Now if only Microsoft would at least acknowledge the issue.....
April 3rd, 2012 4:24pm

I have a similar problem where a share on a 2008 R2 box doesn't seem to refresh. Have you guys seen this? http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2646563 I'm considering installing it, as disabling SMB2 and using just SMB1 fixes the issues on my Win7 SP1 box. It has to be an SMB2 problem, and the Samba thing doesn't really change that. Later versions (post-3.6?) of Samba use SMB2 as well. John
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April 5th, 2012 1:04pm

Was that on the desktop or the server? Please send reply to dan.technet@microent.net . Thanks
May 14th, 2012 5:30pm

Daniel Be - is this registry key you changed on the Windows 7 PC or the Server?
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June 2nd, 2012 12:36pm

islandgirl2 wrote: Daniel Be - is this registry key you changed on the Windows 7 PC or the Server? As this is a key for the LanmanWorkstation service it is only of use on the client PC. Wolfgang
June 2nd, 2012 3:39pm

WolfP is right, it seems to be a bug in the new SMB2 directory cache on client side. Even with http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2646563 (latest SMB2 client) only disabling the cache at the clients using the registry key above makes the problem go away. I've seen no problems in production with the key yet. Daniel
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June 17th, 2012 9:38am

I'm trying this in production now, and so far so good!
June 22nd, 2012 4:42pm

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