Offline File Bugs or Mis-features

I'm finding a number of very frustrating and annoying problems with Offile Files & Folders which I use widely to enable me to work away from home on my laptop and keep my files synchronised with my server. The first problem is this. When I go to Sync Center and look at the offline files sync status, I see a screen saying there was one conflict because a file created on the laptop has the same name as a file on the server. OK. So I right click on this to bring up the resolution box, and select "keep both files". Now it bizarrely says that it can't resolve the problem in the way I've chosen, because it "can't find the file specified". What is going on here? Why does it think I've created two different files of the same name (I don't think I have)? And why when it then tries to save can it not find one of the files it was previously objecting to? See screenshot:


Second problem: one specific file that I've got on my server that's in an "always available offline" folder is not visible in Windows Explorer on the laptop, and when an application tries to access it I get "Access is denied". If I disable offline files in Sync Center, everything starts working again, but if I then re-enable offline files the problem returns. It seems to be a problem with a specific file name. If I rename the file to something else, it then works OK. If I then create a new file with the original name, it's the new file that causes the problem, not the old one. What on earth is going on here? It's making offline files pretty well unusable for some of my work. See screenshot of error message when Tortoise SVN tries to use the offending file:


Thanks for your help - Rowan

Thanks for your offer to help!

Yes, I had been using this file for a while before it started to misbehave. Unfortunately it's a number of weeks ago that this went wrong, and I've tried many things since then to recover, including renaming the file, copying it to a new version of the file and renaming the copy back to the original name etc. As far as I know I didn't do anything risky at around the time it stopped working. Certainly not on the server. I install all sorts of applications on the laptop so I will have installed and uninstalled lots of things since then.

However it's really strange that it's this specific file that's causing problems. No other file seems to be doing it. And I have other files called exactly the same thing in other folders that are not causing problems. I've checked the permissions and ownership of this file on the server, and they are all exactly the same as all the other files. Unfiortunately it's not an option to just change the name of this file, since this is part of Subversion, and I will lose all my change history if I change the name.

Yes, I'm the admin of the server and the laptop.

All ideas for resolving this would be welcome!

Thanks - Rowan

Thanks for your reply and links. Some of those don't sound quite like the problem I'm experiencing. One of them, in your third link, sounds somewhat similar with Access Denied messages being produced - the cure was to install SP2 on Vista (my server is running Vista) so I'm trying that - 475Mb download :-(

CLassicD said:

Is this file only used by yourselft or by others

Basically it's only used by me, and almost always from the laptop. I just keep it on the server because it can be more easily backed up there, and if my laptop gets stolen from my car or I leave it in a railway carriage (no - it's only government ministers that do that (UK joke)) then I haven't lost anything.

Rowan