A dead sync target with Offline folders

**prash_mate** · 03-05-2007

I amd running Windows Vista on my computer and have been using offline folders on it. I recently mapped a drive and set it to "always available offline" and then synchronised it and it was working well without any problems. But the problem is that the system that I was synchronising with is not working anymore and cannot be repaired and therefore I am not able to sync with the original files any longer. I have all the data which is not an issue but I am not able to clean up the offline copies or the sync partnership without being online to that system? Can anyone tell me a procedure on how to do that? Thanks.

**techman** · 09-05-2007

I assume that due to the presence of ghosts in your cache "Delete offline copy" is not working for you. You can try to reinitialize the offiline files cache and see if that works. But that will also remove away all the other data in your cache from other servers/shares and also the changes that you made offline. To go to that method, to reset the offline files cache, follow the below steps:

First of all go tot the registry, and then create a DWORD value called FormatDatabase under HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\CSC\Parameters. To this value, assign the value of 1.
After that restart the computer and you are good to go on.

**Killen** · 23-01-2008

Even I was also having the same issue and I cannot thank you enough to save me from all the hassles. Also, one thing that I would like to mention is that the key "Parameters" needs to be created under "HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\CSC" before we need to ented the DWORD value "FormatDatabase" under it. After that once I rebooted, then this new key is removed together with the annoying dead sync-links. Thanks again.

**rossen** · 23-07-2008

This issue occurs because the client-side cache database that the Offline Files feature uses was corrupted when Windows Vista was deployed. This behavior causes a missing registry value in the registry. But the above method definitely helped me as well to fix this issue. Thanks alot.