Win 7 - Offline Files and Persistent Offline mode
I have several users using Win 7 Pro and the Sync Center for offline files. After some use, the users are appear to go into offline mode and they are unable to ping/connect to the server, however all other devices and server on the network are viewable/pingable. I suspect this had to do with Sync Centre taking the local users machine into offline mode, however even after disabling this option in the local users machine's GPO this is still an issue. The odd thing though if I switch the users from Wired to Wireless theyre able to connect to the file server again.
July 6th, 2011 6:02pm

I've been having a similar problem with users ever since moving to Win7. I've been on Win7 since it went public on a 1Gb connection without any problems. Since most of the users are on 100Mbps connections I thought the "slower" connection was causing the Sync Center to go offline, but I just had a call from a user running Win7 x64 on a 1Gbps connection who has been going offline every day for at least a week. When these systems go into offline mode, the only way I've found to get them back online (remotely) is to reboot. Most of these systems are x86 using one image, and not everyone has had problems. When the systems are "offline," I am able to remote into them without any problems, but I haven't tried pinging the server. The file server is either 2003 or 2008, and we browse to the share with an alias, not by server name.
Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
July 6th, 2011 11:52pm

When these systems go into offline mode, the only way I've found to get them back online (remotely) is to reboot. Hello, When the system is working off-line, open the folder you will see an option to "work on line" that you can click on or off to toggle between off-line and on-line mode. Underneath the address bar, you should see Organize, Sync, Burn, Work (on or off) Line, and new folder. Important: Run some extended ping tests and check for packet loss. If the conenction is not stable, that will cause you to go off-line. You can get some ping test utilities from download.com Cheers Miguel Fra / Falcon IT Services Computer & Network Support, Miami, FL Visit our Knowledgebase and Support Sharepoint Site
July 7th, 2011 12:22am

Thanks for the tip, Miguel. I can't speak for anyone else, but in the cases I've seen, the Work button is not present when there's a problem. When they're solid online, the Work Offline button is there and does what it's supposed to, but not when it's offline. That kind of makes sense, because if it's truly offline and disconnected from the files, then it can't be forced online. I'll do some more testing tomorrow and swap ports between the problem user and myself, since mine has always worked properly as long as I've been on a 1GB connection. Thanks, Jon
Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
July 8th, 2011 12:04am

Just a quick update. The problem came back for my user today, so the switch port wasn't the problem. I uninstalled the Kaspersky NDIS filter, since that has caused weird networking problems in the past. Next up is IPv6. Jon
July 19th, 2011 4:50pm

Disabling IPv6 seems to have helped one of my users, but not the others I've tested. I have one user who has to reboot every couple hours because she goes offlline and doesn't have the button. Another user went offline every few minutes yesterday just trying to open a 900kb Word document, but he still had the button so he was able to get back online easily; unfortunately, he was never able to open his document. Both of my current test users have ping times of 150-200ms when they're having trouble. All of my problem users are connected via wire, not wireless. I can't speak for the original poster, but for me, there is no answer for this thread yet.
Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
September 2nd, 2011 8:36am

This topic is archived. No further replies will be accepted.

Other recent topics Other recent topics