When Vista came out MS guys at Teched made quite a fuss about Offline files being rewritten in Vista and was now reliable and usable. Sadly, offline files in Vista SP1 still deletes data without warning at the slightest provocation. It seem this technology might only work in the themost pristine conformant environment and anyvariation will delete all your files without prior warning.It has no robustness or ability to adapt to changing environment that one might find if a laptop is used at different sites and/or networks. The main problem is Offline files can't tell what is offline and what is online a lot of the time. We use DFS name space to have the same URL available at every site to make GPO policies simple with the URL targets going to the local server at each site. Offline files can't work in thisenviroment because it can't detect offline status if you go to another site. It also doesn't work with online status if you go to a site other than the first one where offline files were setup. This is where it deletes all your files instead of syncing them up to the server as one might wish. Even if we don't use DFS and use server names, a network connection on the domain makesOffline filesthink that it is online when it should be offline if it is at a differnet site to the server. If the offline cache has the latest copy of files, why are they deleted instead of synced? If the server was restored to an older version and the offline cache has the latest version of files, Offline filesare deleted.Same behaviourif the server target folders are empty and cache has a more recent copy of files.Complete madness. PLEASE make Offline files usable in Windows 7. PLEASE stop deleting allfiles in the cache as the default option for every single exception! Users actually want to use their files, this is actually the reason they run Windows in the first place, so they can use their files, not have them deleted at the slightest provocation. How about this for a mantra for Offline files operation - PREVERSE THE FILES IN THE CACHE AT ALL COSTS, DO NOT DELETE THE CACHE WIHTOUT USER CONFIRMATION - WORK OFFLINE IF IN ANY DOUBT ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT YOU FIND YOURSELF IN. This is so very important for latop users who may be a great distance from their home server to get a backup from. If Offline files could work in a usable and reliable way I wouldn't have users hunting me down with pitch forks!

We're aware of this and definitely looking at some options to fix the problem. Ned Pyle [MSFT] - MS Enterprise Platforms Support - Beta Team

When Folders are rediected via policy they are automatically made available offline, this might seem like a good thing at first. Sadly, the way offline files work, it's a disaster just waiting to happen.When you go to a site where the target of the offline files isn't available (you're thinking offline files will use the cached copy aren't you?) offline files doesn't sense being offline if there is a connection to the domain, gives an error about the URL being unavailable and doesn't go offline and can't go online. So you're left with a non-functioning profile that can't really do much. Why is the error behaviour always to be as frustratingly useless as possible instead of doing something useful, like GOING OFFLINE and using the Cache?!?!? Another useless mis-feature of offline files, you can only opt to go Offline line (by clicking the Offline button) when you're already online. That's actually kind of stupid in practice. It would make far more sense to be able to go offline ANY TIME WHEN YOURE NOT ONLINE.A Subtle difference, but in practise would be ever so useful for users to access their files in the cache in unexpected circumstances.Anyway, so to fix the problem with redirected folder that malfunctioned, you try to remove thethe redirection by adding another policy to redirect folders to the local profile (the is no way to UNREDIRECT folders in a policy without removing the policy itself, non-laptop users stuck at the home site are working quite happily and need the policy to stay). You'll be surprisedlike I was to find that you must be ONLINE and have access to the redirected target in order to UNREDIRECT your folders, if you can't achieve this rapturous state of affairs (and if you could, you wouldn't need to be removing the redirection in the first place!) then deleting the user profile and starting all over again is the only option.With a fresh profilethe policy to direct the folder to the local profile is the first one applied and it works and offline files aren't used either. Your user is completlypissed beyond belief and all their files are gone without any hope of recovery (apart from the offsite backup we keep for disasters, like being a windows offline files user).

Yes, we are working on it and fully understand all the parameters you are describing. The problem here (as you already mentioned) actually exists in Vistaand took us a long time to hear about because the configuration being used is DFS, CSC, Redirected files, mobile users that work within the corporate network, and (presumably, or the user will have inconsistent data between DFS nodes) FRS or DFSR all at the same time - it turns out this is fairly uncommon. We know what causes the issue and hope to have it fixed within Win7 if at all possible. I have been pressing for a backport to Vista as well.Thanks for the feedback. Ned Pyle [MSFT] - MS Enterprise Platforms Support - Beta Team

Thanks for the gimer of hope Ned. We had the idea that offline filesconcept needs to be reversed from what it is now, regarding offline/online. BealwaysOffline by default and only go online when I'm at the same site as my server.Then maybe add a few override conditions for folks who have only highspeed networks who want to be always online the way it is now with a domain connection.Maybe even nominate the sites where I want to be considered Online instead of default Offline.Any chance my client could just be a DFSR partner to a server? That would be even better than offline files for my user data.Cheers,Mark.

We've noodled on that for a few years, but ultimately - not in Win7. As much as I love RDC and as much as I'veworked with it (probably more than any other MS employees except the development team), it's still not integratedin very many parts of MS except DFSR on the server and (seeeecretly) in Windows Live Messenger.Now, one thing you might consider doing going forward is evaluating using BranchCache rather than a complex DFS-Redirection-Replication environment. It is designed to minimize bandwidth usage in remote scenarios without the complexity. Other folks have started using systems like Live Mesh. The Offline files system also actually works quite well as long as you avoid using it with FR and DFSN where server paths can keep changing, leading to the issue. And there are actually some pretty cool new features in offline files I'm pretty excited about (although can't talk about yet I'm afraid, as I'm not sure what parts are in the Beta) Ned Pyle [MSFT] - MS Enterprise Platforms Support - Beta Team