Our tech department is preparing to deploy Windows 7 to all of our company's laptop users. However, we have an issue with synchronizing their files. In Windows XP, we would log in as the user (e.g. John Smith) and simply change the path of My Documents to a network folder (e.g. \\Server\Users\jsmith ). This would make it so that when the user was on the network, it would save documents both locally and on the network. The user could take his or her laptop home to work on files, and the folders would synchronize when the computer was reconnected to the network. However, this doesn’t seem to work in Windows 7. When we attempt the same path change, it overwrites \\Server\Users\jmith , changing it to \\Server\Users\Documents . It also doesn’t save any created files or on the network drive. Using Sync Center doesn’t help either. Whenever I manually sync, I just get the following error: The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process. Long story short, we want a user to be able to access their network files locally. Whenever they log off, the two folders should synchronize. When they log in, all changes should update in both places.

Hi, Based on my research, I would like to suggest you try the following 1. Run Process Explorer to check which processes are using the file: Process Explorer 2. Re-initialize offline files cache: Error message in Windows Vista when you try to rename a new subfolder in a shared folder on a network: "The <SharedFolderName> folder does not exist" Then, please re-configure the offline files and see how it works. Hope this helps. Thanks. Nicholas Li - MSFT

Can you detail the process above a little further for someone not familiar with Process Explorer? This issue is really causing me serious grief. I have tried all of the other "fixes" listed here without success. Thank you. -Tom

I've got the same problem. It's impossible to synch any files on my remote server, and I'm sure no process are using those files because the remote server is a simple file server. Anyone could help me ? thanks

I am also having the same issue. Simple file server, I know there is no other process using the files.