Community, We just lost our "Data" drive which had all our shares and mapped drives. I was able to re-partition and restore the data back to their locations . The challenge is, our workstations seem to have Offline Files on or something. When the click the drive letter, no files are shown. If I disconnect the drive and try to map using \\servername\sharename i get an error. Even trying to go to \\servername\ to see all shares I get only one Share named "Users" - which is our User's drive (not restored yet) There is no netlogon even to re-execute the login script. If I manually disconnect the drive, and than map using the \\ip address\share it works. However, printers and other resources do not. I did notice the "Offline Files" with the computer is present. I cannot disable it (grey). I have reviewed the Group Policies on the server and there does not appear to be any settings for it, enabled or otherwise. The only way I've been able to fix it thus far is by sitting at the local machine, logging in as local admin and 1) Turn off Offline Files 2) Disable it for the computer in local GPO 3) Release IP, Flush DNS, Renew IP and Register DNS 4) Reboot the computer This seems to sovle it. Trying to figure out what this has to do with - is it Offline Files, is a DNS cache issue?
If offline files stuff is grayed out, it is definitely enabled by group policy (and it is enabled by default, if you used folder redirection). You can disable it via group policy. Run rsop.msc and you'll see where it was enabled. I *disable* it via group policy - you can choose to do this for users, or for all workstations. I don't remember what GPO controls this by default in SBS as I always set up my own. Your post illustrates one of the many reasons I do not like offline files.
