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Many of our users have their Home folder set as Available Offline. Their Windows 7 laptops will not be back on our network for a few weeks. In the mean time, we're setting up new servers and reorganizing our files, so the network path to the Home folder is going to be completely different.

Based on some testing I did, when the users return, any files they've created or modified while offline will be gone, and the new Home folder will be there and not set to sync. The offline cache of the old Home folder is still accessible through the Sync Center, but they're not going to want to dig through that and try to find what's missing. Avoiding this would involve keeping the old server around and moving everyone to the new location in person, so we know for sure they're synced first.

Is there any way to avoid this that isn't as tedious, like a quick registry edit or something that will point the old offline cache to the new location?

Adam
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2 Answers2

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There was an old csccmd.exe utility in Windows XP that had functionality to do what you're looking for but it doesn't work with the new Offline Files (CSC) in Windows Vista and 7.

In Vista and Windows 7 Offline Files has a WMI API that can be used to manipulate the configuration in an automated fashion. I haven't used it but I strongly suspect this API will be the key to what you're looking for.

A search comes up with this script and its related blog entry, titled "Updating your Offline Files cache in Windows Vista to point to a new server" that I suspect will work fine on Windows 7, given the similarity with Windows 7 and Vista. The script basically amounts to some command line parsing and finally a call to the "RenameItem" method of the "Win32_OfflineFilesCache" WMI object. You could probably condense the script down into just a couple of lines (and add the necessary restart to make the rename actually happen) for your purposes.

Evan Anderson
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  • I tried the script and it worked. Only problem I ran into was when I just renamed the home folder rather than actually moving it. The script would get an error saying the new name already existed, probably because CSC seems to cache the names of all other folders in the same location as any cached folders. But moving the folder, works great. Thanks. – Adam Jun 12 '12 at 15:37
  • Adam can you share the script that worked for you? I know it's a old post but after days of testing I can rename path but never get the offline cached files to sync to new location and therefore look lost. (in test area but need it live soon) Thanks Vito –  Jun 25 '13 at 04:04
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There was a program that came with the Server Admin Toolkit book. It was called cachemov.exe. This let us specify the location of the client-side cache. I hadn't tested it since winXP and server 2003.

Ben L
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