How to use offline files feature
How to enable offline files?
Go to My Computer-> Tools -> Folder Options-> Offline files
Check on the "Enable offline files" button.
How to disable offline files?
Go to My computer->tools-> Folder options->Offline files
Uncheck the "Enable offline files" button.
Where is the offline files folder?
%windir%\CSC i.e C:\windows\CSC
How to change the location of offline files folder?
There is no direct User Interface to change offline folder location. We can change the offline files location only by editing the value of the registry key DatabaseLocation under the following node.
\HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\NetCache\
You can create DatabaseLocation, if it does not exist.
How to make a network share available offline?
First you need to enable offline files as described above. Then open the remote server(\\servername) and right click on the share you want to be available in offline mode also. Then you can see "Make available offline" in the menu. Click on that and you can see all the files in the share being copied to local disk. After this you can see a small arrow symbol on the folder icon which indicates that the folder is pinned for offline availability.
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6 comments:
When is Microsoft going to fix the GPO that is supposed to allow system administrators to enable or disable Offline Files?
This doesn't actually disable or enable the Offline Files feature, it just enables or disables the user interface that allows the user to enable or disable Offline Files.
The GPO is only of use if there is another means of disabling or enabling Offline Files prior to disabling user access. We tried running CSCCMD in a logon script but couldn't get the feature to disable.
Hi Patrick,
If I understood correctly, what you are saying is that disabling offline files using group policy is only locking the user interface (through which the user can change the settings) and the users who already enabled offline files will continue to use the feature.
I think there must be some way to totally stop csc running on the machine. I need to check how this can be done.. I will get back to you very soon.
Patrick,
You can set the following registry key to 0 to stop CSC completely.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\
Services\MRxSmb\Parameters\CSCEnabled
CSC will be off on systems with the above setting.
Thanks for getting back to me on my blog.
Basically this issue came up with Vista, when we got our first Vista machines hooked up on our domain, the little green SyncCenter icon comes up into the system tray and there is no way of getting rid of it. According to what Microsoft documentation I could find it cannot be turned off.
Then, when I tried to turn off Offline Files in Vista (which is on) because of the policy setting the user interface is disabled and I cannot turn it off. Likewise running CSCCMD with the appropriate switch throws an error because of that disabling, which appears to be what the policy does.
Whenever we hook an XP machine onto the domain for the first time, Offline Files is always on, but then when I run gpupdate and it gets the policy from the DC for the very first time, after reboot Offline Files is off and stays off forever.
So it is more of an issue that Vista seems to ignore this setting and behaves differently and leaves Offline Files turned on with the disablement so that the user can't turn it off unless they remove the policy. Whereas on XP the policy will always kill Offline Files stone dead.
We are a school network and I want as little as possible in the System Tray that the kids can fiddle with and leave me to waste time fixing up afterwards.
So I would like to know if that setting or anything else like a policy will force Vista to turn off SyncCenter and CSC and make that little green oval go away.
I do not have much knowledge on vista offline files. AFAIK, CSC is implemented as a service in Vista. So disabling this service might help you. You can execute the following command for this.
Sc config csc start=disabled
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