Offline files synchronization fails for 4 files, "access denied"

I have a client who took her XP Pro laptop home over the weekend and made
changes to 4 files which are in her My Documents folder.

Her folder is on \\server\home$\username\My Documents.

\\server\home$ is the share, with Everyone having full control of the share.

Her My Documents is being redirected via group policy with Basic redirection
to that folder. The folder was automatically created by the policy the first
time she logged in, and the files were moved automatically to that folder
with no problems. It has worked well for over a month.

When she connects to the network, the warning appears in the system tray
saying offline changes need to be synchronized. When she runs the
synchronization, 4 files fail with the error "Access to file <filename> is
denied on <server path>". The synchronization appears to otherwise succeed.

For troubleshooting, we have done the following:

We verified the permissions on the share and subfolders using the Technet
article on required Offline Files permissions.

Followed KB275461 with no success

Disabled the NIC, created a file in My Documents, and re-enabled the NIC. No
success, and the new file is added to the 4 previous files which fail the
synchronization

Gave the user full control on \\server\home$ and subfolders/files (there are
only 2 other users on this share, security isn't much concern)

Gave Everyone full control on \\server\home$ and subfolders/files

Enabled security auditing on the share, but NOTHING gets logged when she
tries to synchronize

Tried to copy the files out of the Offline Files listing on the laptop to
the desktop, and get the error "Couldn't read from the source file or disk"

None of these steps has worked, the error is the same as always. My next
step would be to reinitialize the offline files cache, but she has emphasized
to me that she cannot lose those changes, she logged special weekend-billable
time to make them, etc. Before I go back and tell her that her changes are
gone, I wanted to know if you guys had any further advice or troubleshooting.

TL;DR: Offline files will eat your data sometimes.

[lysis]

One thing I could not quite follow. When she is Off the network, can she
access the documents that she saved in My Documents?
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/884739
CSCCMD might be helpfull

Then I think something more has happened. You could try this:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/884739/en-us
Is it possible that a quota has been reached on the server copy, or some
other reason like that?

OK, that's progress. It sounds like you need csccmd 1.1 but you'd really
want to find out what went wrong as well,

I'll give csccmd a try.

We have quotas implemented but she is well below her quota limit. She can
copy files to the public share on the same drive with no problems.

Since then she has changed a few more files in My Documents and those files
now refuse to sync. She's up to 8 failures. 7 of them were existing files
which she changed, and one of them is a file we created for troubleshooting
purposes.

Quick update:
Microsoft PSS won't let me use our partner agreement to download CSCCMD 1.1.
It's not considered a hotfix. I downloaded the 2003 resource kit but it
contains version 1.0, which has no extract functionality. The woman at PSS
said that it will cost $260 to open a support case and get the tool, so I'll
have to ask the client whether they want to pay for it or not.

Sorry to hear you are still having problems.
I am still not clear: when the user is offline, if she amends a file in My
Documents does it then fail to open again while still offline? I am not
clear from what you have said what the connection is between failing to
synchronize and being unable to access the document.

The sequence of events is:
Go offline
Open existing file
Save it, save is successful, close it
Reopen file, successful, close it
Go online
Synchronize, changed file fails
Open file, fails
Go offline
Open file, fails

It's as if the file is being poisoned at the exact instant it attempts to
synchronize it.
If she stays online, any files she changes have no problems.

Just a few further thoughts:
- If you View the Offline Files, do you notice anything in common about the
files that now can not be opened?
- Is there sufficient space locally for the temporary offline files?
- Anything wrong with the user profile on the laptop?

OK, new twists.
When I looked at the offline file listing today, after 3 days of no syncs, I
saw that the files in question are no longer listed as "Local copy changed".
They are listed as "Local copy exists only".
I checked the server and sure enough, the files are gone.
So I went through the procedure I posted before with another file (a text
file I created myself for troubleshooting) and watched the server drive. As
soon as I try to sync and the file fails, the file on the server vanishes.
It's as if it's going to do a file replacement and getting as far as deleting
the old file, then creating the new file fails.
I tried to see what Filemon could show me but I had to leave before I could
get a good dump going.
Meanwhile, I got an email in reply to my posts from someone that says a
certain Dell authentication program was causing similar problems for him.
This laptop is indeed a Dell, so I'll investigate that as well.
She has plenty of disk space reserved for offline files, and as far as I can
tell there's no problem with her user profile, e.g. no errors in the event
log about registry issues or whatever.

[lladner]

If you are having offline file synchronization failures with access denied errors on newer Dell notebooks, check to see if a security program from Wave Systems is installed on the notebook. The name of the program is Empress or Express Security or some such.

I had the exact symtoms described in the previous posts and corrected the problem by removing the security suite in add/remove programs.

Turns out it was the Document Manager portion of the Embassy Wave Systems suite that was impacting file synchronization. The quick way to verify this was to just end the process WavXDocMgr via task manager and then try to sync. When doing this, the sync should work now manually and during logon… no more access denied errors. The service can be disabled via msconfig > startup > uncheck WavXDocMgr and reboot. This might not be the cleanest method but uninstalling the entire suite or just the Doc Manager portion produced Msiinstaller issues. I am sure they could have been resolved via a reinstall/uninstall or manual uninstall. I just cleared the service from startup and rebooted… it did not impact startup by doing so this way. Everything worked fine with CSC and sync after.

Forums that led me to troubleshooting the Embassy Wave Systems suite:

Offline files synchronization fails for 4 files, "access denied"

We've had a series of Dell laptops with various syncing problems from 'Parameter is Incorrect' to the 'Access Denied' ones discussed above.

As mentioned previously, the really troublesome thing about the latter error is that it deletes the original file not only from the share, but also seems to remove any reference in backup solutions that may be running.

Removing the Embassy trust Suite seems to have resolved most of these errors.

I use a programme to file synchronization, which is called File Sync. Auto file and folder sync software is a necessary thing for everybody. That is why I use this program and haven't such problems.

[unk2255]

The following worked for me!

Turns out it was the Document Manager portion of the Embassy Wave Systems suite that was impacting file synchronization. The quick way to verify this was to just end the process WavXDocMgr via task manager and then try to sync. When doing this, the sync should work now manually and during logon… no more access denied errors. The service can be disabled via msconfig > startup > uncheck WavXDocMgr and reboot. This might not be the cleanest method but uninstalling the entire suite or just the Doc Manager portion produced Msiinstaller issues. I am sure they could have been resolved via a reinstall/uninstall or manual uninstall. I just cleared the service from startup and rebooted… it did not impact startup by doing so this way. Everything worked fine with CSC and sync after.

We have Dell laptops with the Embassy Wave System suite, and we had the synchronization errors.
This post really helped us to make our user's life easier with the off-line files.

[stevej00]

I have been battling this stinkin issue for over/almost a full year !

My IT guy was stumped (thankfully not billing...hehe he may be reading this now :-)) But this put me through probably 50 hours of getting no where he!!

I shut down the Wave Embassy security thing and the synch went right through....it is off the laptop now.

I have also been having issues with my VPN client never working either...So I will be trying that this weekend form home !!

I had developed a work around for the synch issue...if files are changed while disconnected...go to the offline files list...sort it by status...copy to the desktop or a folder...log back on to the server...then copy the files by hand back to thier place of origin.

I believe I also had used winzip with the path's on in the zip file...but my memory on that is not 100% clear.

[GaryC]

One of our users is experiencing the "Access Denied" issue when synchronising one of his files. Interestingly this is happening on a new Dell laptop.

After looking through these forums I was convinced the answer was this pesky Wave\Embassy software. Unfortunately, when I asked the boss (it had to be didnt it!) to uninstall the software, he has advised it doesnt exist in Control Panel.

He was also unable to see any processes similar to WavXDocMgr.

On a different path I checked the share was set up for full control, this is already the case.

Unfortunately it is very difficult for me to troubleshoot the problem as I am limited in when I can get access to the laptop. The laptop is installed with Windows 7.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks for posting the solution! I have been toddling with this for over two weeks as an IT guy of many hats.

[lightgate]

Awesome! Saved me a couple of head scratching!