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Accessing a home drive with redirected folder causes it to go offline in Windows 7

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Symptoms

Considering this scenario:
  • Several home drives with redirected folders are hosted on third-party storage.
  • This third-party storage provides a feature that enables the user to use an identical path to access their user folder.
  • It provides the feature to translate the identical path with a user name request to an actual share path for each user. For example, if the identical virtual path is \\internal.contoso.com\share, this path can be translated to something like \\server.internal.contoso.com\userfolders\%username%. 
  • On a Windows 7 SP1-based computer, you are logged in as User A. You run a command prompt on the computer as a different user (User B) who does not have a user folder on the storage.
  • You try to access that identical path at the command prompt.
In this scenario, the share folder of User A goes into offline mode.

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Cause

When a request from User B is sent to the third-party storage, it is translated into an actual user folder of User B first. However, User B’s folder does not exist and so the storage returned a BAD_NETWORK_NAME error. When you receive this error, the Offline files server takes the scope (the virtual identical path) offline. This is because Offline files service cannot understand that the identical path must be translated to a different actual path for different users. This translation is pure third-party design and logic. 

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Resolution

Offline files inspect each scope for the server availability by periodically impersonating the current logon user of Windows and transition the scope to online mode if no Network error is received. We recommend that you do not use a similar third-party feature when you use Offline Files caching on share folders. 

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More Information

The behavior of Offline files is by design.
  • One reason for offline files to take a scope (share) offline is when a network error is returned from the share server. Network errors includes the following errors:
    0xC000020C STATUS_CONNECTION_DISCONNECTED 0xC000023C STATUS_NETWORK_UNREACHABLE 0xC00000B5 STATUS_IO_TIMEOUT 0xC000023D STATUS_HOST_UNREACHABLE 0xC000020D STATUS_CONNECTION_RESET 0xC00000CC STATUS_BAD_NETWORK_NAME 0xC00000BE STATUS_BAD_NETWORK_PATH 0xC0000241 STATUS_CONNECTION_ABORTED 0xC00000C9 STATUS_NETWORK_NAME_DELETED 0xC00000BC STATUS_REMOTE_NOT_LISTENING 0xC00000C4 STATUS_UNEXPECTED_NETWORK_ERROR 0xC0000008 STATUS_INVALID_HANDLE 0xC00000FB STATUS_REDIRECTOR_NOT_STARTED
    Note Offline files take a scope online or offline. Nothing indicates that the online or offline operation mode is under user context.
  • Offline files inspect each scope for the server availability by periodically impersonating the current logon user of Windows and then transition the scope to online mode when the server becomes available again. 

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Keywords: kbtshoot, kbexpertiseadvanced, kbsurveynew, kb

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Article Info
Article ID : 2972340
Revision : 1
Created on : 1/7/2017
Published on : 6/6/2014
Exists online : False
Views : 167