Question

Access denied on edited offline files

Asked by: officecare

I have a client where Windows XP offline files have gone awry.  This is a big problem as almost the entire company's employees are laptop users that do a lot of traveling.

While in the office and when they are working online with the server, they have no trouble whatsoever in any of the folders that are available offline.  They can create, delete, modify, rename, move, and open files in those folders.  Also, when they are offline they can do the same however the problem is that when they go to synchronize their modified offline files, they receive a message that the server copy was deleted and what do they want to do with their local copy.  I have them choose the option that keeps it and syncs it back to the server, but the synchronization ultimately fails and there are Access Denied failures in the synchronization errors pane for every one of the altered files.  If they go to the path of the files, they are all missing; however, if they go offline then the files are present.  If you look on the file server, the files are not present.

I have been able to work around this issue by going offline, moving the files that are complaining to a non-offline folder, going online and synchronizing, then putting the files back in their original place.  However, it just happens again next time they go offline and modify files.

As far as I know, none of the users are encrypting their offline files cache (I know for a fact that one I've been using as an example is not).  It is a one server domain environment, upgraded from a peer-to-peer workgroup.

Here are some details about the environment:

Server OS:  Windows Server 2008 Standard SP2 x64
Roles:  AD, DNS, DHCP, WSUS, backup, file & print
Folders offline:  User's My Documents folders (and all subfolders except My Pictures), two shared folders
Folder share permissions:  Global Security Group containing all of the company employees has Full Control
NTFS permissions on root of share:  Domain Local Security Group has special permissions on this folder only (List Folder / Read Data, Create Folders / Append Data).  Sole member of this group is the Global Security Group containing all the employees as mentioned above.  SYSTEM has Full Control on this folder, subfolders, and files.  CREATOR OWNER has Full Control on this folder, subfolders, and files.  Administrators has Full Control on this folder, subfolders, and files.

Client OS:  Windows XP Professional SP3
Notes:  All users are local administrators on their respective machines.

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Asked On
2009-10-01 at 14:24:44ID24778619
Tags

Windows XP

,

offline files

,

access denied

Topics

Windows XP Operating System

,

Windows Server 2008

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
7

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Answers

 

by: grayePosted on 2009-10-08 at 12:53:20ID: 25529411

So, this is only happening to a few files?   And is it always the same files?

 

by: officecarePosted on 2009-10-13 at 06:05:49ID: 25559400

No, it isn't always the same files.  It's any file that is modified offline.

If they go online and try to synchronize, there is a synchronization error on those modified files.  They say "Access Denied" and are also deleted from the server.  It seems the server deletes the older copy in preparation for copying the newer copy but is unable to perform the copy, resulting in the file going missing on the server.

I have been able to get these files to synchronize by going offline again, moving them from their original location to a location that isn't cached offline, going online, synchronizing, then moving the files back to their original location and synchronizing again.  The problem is that it simply occurs again if they go offline and modify files.

Again, they aren't necessarily the same files each time.  It just happens on files that were modified while offline.

It turns out that it is only occurring on three of four computers.  I am wondering if maybe the offline files cache is corrupt.  They do have A LOT of offline data (20 - 60 GB), which is against my recommendation but they refuse to listen.

 

by: grayePosted on 2009-10-13 at 17:35:13ID: 25566200

That's very odd...   Obviously, I'd be looking at what different about those 3 or 4 PCs (but you already knew that didn't you...)

I'd be checking OS version, Service Pack version, updates, etc..

 

by: officecarePosted on 2009-10-20 at 09:10:26ID: 25615585

Microsoft seems to think that the problem is a corrupt Offline Files cache.  I am going to reinitialize the Offline Files database on one of the laptops and try it again.  I will update this after I am able to test that.

 

by: officecarePosted on 2009-10-20 at 10:14:55ID: 25616282

Well, I reinitialized the offline files, made a folder available offline and tested modifying files offline and synchronizing and I'm having the same problem.

 

by: officecarePosted on 2009-10-20 at 11:25:41ID: 25616974

More information:

The problem seems isolated at this time to two of four laptops.  I have noticed that the two laptops experiencing this problem are Windows XP SP3, while the two that are not exhibiting this problem are Windows XP SP2.  There is a fifth computer and it is running Windows XP SP3, but it is a desktop and is therefore very infrequently offline, if ever.

 

by: officecarePosted on 2009-10-20 at 11:35:16ID: 25617063

I believe I have found the solution.  Using this newfound SP2 vs. SP3 information, I was able to actually get some Google search results that started to lead me to the solution.

I saw one person state that fingerprint reader software for a laptop caused this problem on SP3.  There is no fingerprint reader on these laptops, but it did lead me to check the installed programs.  I immediately noticed the EMBASSY Trust Suite installed.  I remember another customer having a very strange file access denied problem on a server share where users on a certain laptop could not delete files on sever shares, but could do everything else.  They had Full Control permissions.  Removing the EMBASSY Trust Suite solved that problem.

So I did another search, including "embassy" in my search terms and found an article that had the following comment:

-------------------------------------------------------

"# re: User comments about offline files
Friday, May 09, 2008 3:36 PM by Wayne Brown
For the Access is Denied posts throughout this blog the information below fixed my problem!! (and it wasn't even a Microsoft Problem!)

This only applies if you have Embassy Wave Systems software installed on your PC (I have all Dell PC's and didn't even know this was on there.)

Turns out it was the Document Manager portion of the Embassy Wave

Systems suite that was impacting file synchronization.  The quick way

to verify this was to just end the process WavXDocMgr via task manager

and then try to sync.  When doing this, the sync should work now

manually and during logon… no more access denied errors.  The

service can be disabled via msconfig > startup > uncheck WavXDocMgr and

reboot.  This might not be the cleanest method but uninstalling the

entire suite or just the Doc Manager portion produced Msiinstaller

issues.  I am sure they could have been resolved via a

reinstall/uninstall or manual uninstall.  I just cleared the service

from startup and rebooted… it did not impact startup by doing so

this way.  Everything worked fine with CSC and sync after.

Forums that led me to troubleshooting the Embassy Wave Systems suite:

http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=942215">http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=942215

http://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Microsoft_Operating_Systems/Window...

--

mfrancis "

-------------------------------------------------------
Source:  http://blogs.msdn.com/jonathanh/archive/2006/03/01/user-comments-about-offline-files.aspx

I was able to confirm the same behavior and terminating/disabling WavXDocMgr seems to have solved the issue on this one laptop at least.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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