I've been having an issue with group policy (both at the local and domain levels) for some time, but recently it's become more urgent that I find a solution. Our users have their z: mapped to a DFS share (hosted on Server 2003 [not r2]), anduse Group Policy's Administrative Templates\Network\Offline Files\Administrativeassigned offline filessetting to keep certain folders within their z: available offline. Some of our XP machines are still not on the domain, and so have used gpedit.msc to set thosefolders manually. Most of the XP machines are on the domain and get that policy handed to them from our domain controller. The issue is that Vista doesn't seem to really respect that setting. My first vista box worked ok (if I remember, I had to set it in gpedit.msc first to make it "see" the setting, then I was able to delete it from there and it respected the Domain's Group Policy settings. However, I formatted that computer again around the time SP1 was released, and have not been able to get the Administratively Assigned Offline Files to work on that or any other vista box since then. My current test machine is in an OU on the domain that has the list of Administratively Assigned Offline Files set in both the user and computer settings, as well as having assigned the same list in both user and computer settings in GPEdit.msc. Furthermore, "Subfolders always available offline" and "allow or disallow use of the offline files feature" are set to "enabled" under "computer config" on both the domain group policy for that OU and in the local gpedit.msc. (even though I know that "subfolders always available offline" doesn't do anything in Vista). I've also attempted to set the list in only one of each of the four places you can assign the Admin. assigned offline files in turn, running gpupdate and restarting, but none of them had any different effect. My sync center lists the network path to the share mapped to the z:, but when I try to sync it, it just immediately returns and says "successful" When I browse it, nothing is marked as available offline (nor is it available when I subsequently disconnect from the network). Is there another setting in Vista I have to set so that it actually uses this list? Thanks for your help!

Hi James, It seems that the policy has been applied, because in Sync Center we could find that it tries to sync the files every time. I suspect that issues occur during the synchronization. I suggest that you disable the anti-virus and firewall on the server temporary and then check if the issue still occurs. If it reoccurs, please try to create a share folder on another Windows Vista computer, and create map drive for it on another Windows Vista computer. Then add this drive in the policy and check if the files can be accessed when offline.

Thanks for your reply. The errors still occur when AV and firewalls are disabled. I'll try a share from another computer asap. Your comment that errors may occur got me to thinking though; when I right-click a directory in the root of the DFS share and choose "Make available offline" on the client computer, it will go ahead and sync that folder, but with a few errors: namely, "access denied" to the DO_NOT_REMOVE_NtFrs_PreInstall_Directory in each of the root's links (shares). Would that error keep it from syncing the rest of the folder when applied through group policy (designed to be an "in the background" type task) but work OK when manually assigning offline files (which is more of an up-front type oftask, with a dialog and all)? If that's the case, is there a way of specifying that those NtFrs directories should be excluded from the administratively assigned offline files? Again, thanks

I've tried so many things this afternoon and re-initialized the offline files database so many times, it's hard to know exactly what made it work, but it's working now. My best guess as to what made the difference was switching the keys in "Administratively Assigned Offline Files" from the mapped drive path (z:\link) to a true fully-qualified UNC path (\\domain.ext\root\link\ ). The drive letters seem to work fine if you're not pointing at a DFS share, however. Also, I don't get the access denied to the NtFrs folders when pointing at the UNC path, whereas I was when I was pointing at the links right under a mapped network drive. I also found the hard way that I don't ever want to press the "work offline" button in one of the link's roots on a DFS share...it disconnected and didn't give me an option to reconnect. I had to re-initialize the offline files database to get it back. It seems there were a few other patterns I was able to discern when trying various types of shares, but that's all I can remember right now. Thanks for your help! Edit: the NtFrs errors are back now...but the folders are still syncing correctly. So I'm going to chalk it up to primarily changing to the correct path format. I can't really say anything else unless it comes up broken again someday... =)