Sync Center - Offline Files - Unable to reconnect to mapped drive
I am having a perplexing problem with Sync Center and offline files.I am using VISTA on my T61 laptop (Vista Business) and GATEWAY desktop (Home?). I am using the Desktop as the "primary" file server which would be the master source for files. However, I travel a great deal and take the laptop with me wherever, so most of my changes are made on the laptop. Occasionally, I will work with a file or add files on the desktop.For a short while, the Sync center worked well and the network connected the laptop and desktop whenever I turned the laptop on at home. For some reason, now, I cannot make a network connection through the sync center or through any other means that I am aware of USING THE COMPUTER NAME. My desktop is called GATEWAY. My laptop is T61. On the T61 when I am connected to my home network, I can go to Windows "Computer" and see the network location for GATEWAY which is mapped as "Z". However, clicking on this location, I get to the offline files location on the T61 and not on the GATEWAY. In Sync Center, I see under "offline files" - NETWORK FILES AVAILABLE OFFLINE. So I am able to get to the cached files on the laptop but I can't get to the Desktop folder that the files are in and I can not sync the changes in both computers. Further, if I try to access the GATEWAY via NETWORK in Windows, I can only get to the offline files location on the Desktop - as if the computers were not on the network.However, I tried to access the Desktop/GATEWAY using its IP address and I can connect to it. To try this, I tried to map the drive to a different letter drive than Z. I mapped the IP address of the GATEWAY to "T" and it was fine.I have thought about turning offline files off (not sure how to do that), disconnecting the mapped drive Z, and starting over, but I will probably lose a significant of work that has been done on the two computers and not synced in the past 2 weeks since I was last able to connect.I am not a tech guru, and I am getting very frustrated. I imagine that this is a simple issue and I should be able to reconnect the laptop and the desktop using the mapped drive or the network function. But I can't figure out how or what I must do.Can anyone share their knowledge on this situation?Thanks,Eric
January 31st, 2008 11:50am

Hi,I have the exact same problem, my desktop is running XP(sp2) and my laptop Vista Ultimate (sp1).Syncing and the sync center seem to work fine, until I connect to a different network. When I come back home and connect back to my own network the same problems as in the previous post occur.Rebooting (of both my desktop and my laptop) doesn't solve the problem. The only way to get the syncing to work again is as follows: connect to \\desktopIP manualy sync everything disconnect the network drive mapping delete all offline files reboot connect the network drive again make the folders "Always avaiable offline" againThis seems like a quite serious bug and should be fixed.I hoped it would be solved in SP1, but it isn't.
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February 23rd, 2008 8:22am

I'm having the same issue - I wonder if the problem is because we're MAPPING the network drives, and syncing on the mapped drive?Suppose we don't map the drive, and just connect to it via the Network branch in explorer, then perhaps the Sync Centre will work properly? I'm going to try it. [*Edit - see below*]FWIW here's how the problem appears to me:I've got an E: drive with my data on on my XP desktop, which I map to E: drive on my Vista Business laptop.I only have a few files "available offline" - powerpoint presentations which I use at church. To make them available, I navigate to then on the laptop e:\ drive, right click, choose 'make available offline'.Sometimes I get to church, where I want to use presentations, and they're there (ie at e:\path\file.ppt on the laptop), and sometimes I find they're not! On those occasions I get a "the folder or file at e:\path\file don't exist" sort of message.As you can imagine - that's a BIG pain!!!! (Quickly rush home with the memory stick...)So - here's what I'm going to try: not mapping the e drive, and doing all my "Available Offline" transactions via the Network\\COMPUTERNAME\E drive\path\file.ppt path in explorer. Maybe that'll work.Edit: It didn't. Same problem with the same file. However, other files work, so it might be something to do with characters in the file path/name.
February 27th, 2008 6:05am

I have a windows 7 system and a temp Windows 8 system doing the exact same thing.... so it seems that it is a common problem would like a solution.....
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April 19th, 2012 9:39am

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