I use the offline files feature all the time on my home computers. For instance, I have a file on my main computer (which is my wife’s computer) called “School”, and I work on it remotely on my own laptop, setting it to offline mode so that when I go out of the house or so that when my wife closes her laptop I can continue working on my files. More importantly, that main computer gets synced up to Mozy, so if I want stuff backed up, I need to keep it on the main computer. I also put all of our music there, and add that main computer’s music folder to the music library on my other laptops. This way, you only have to organize music in one place. I have that folder on offline mode, too, for the reasons mentioned above. Same thing with photos.
Here’s the problem. When you use offline files in Windows, it creates a cache of everything that’s available offline, in C:\Windows\CSC. Sometimes stuff gets all kludged up for some reason and you start getting all kinds of sync errors. This happens to me once a year or so. It’s a pain, but the convenience and security of offline files makes it worthwhile to me. So, to fix this, you need to empty the cache, but ne touchez pas this directory! Instead, you have to delete it another way. In prior versions of Windows, you could go to offline files and CTRL-SHIFT click on “Delete files”, and it would purge your cache (or something like that…I forget what you were supposed to do). In Windows 7, they made this harder, for whatever rush-to-retail reasons they had in mind. You have to add the following registry entry and then reboot your computer:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\CSC\Parameters]
“FormatDatabase”=dword:00000001
After you reboot, Offline Files should find the key and start clearing your cache. When it’s empty, you can resync all your folders.
