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I have servers with Shadow Copies enabled taking snapshots a couple times a day. From the server, if you look at the local devices you can see the Previous Versions being populated reliably. But from remote clients, the ability for an end-user to see the Previous Versions seems to be very hit-or-miss.

For the sake of this question you can assume that all my clients are Windows 7 and the Servers are Windows Server 2008 R2.

Is there an exhaustive list of everything that is required for end user to see Previous Versions? Are their any requirements for a certain level of share or filesystem permissions, other then read access? Does something need to be open on the firewall, other then what is already in-place for normal Windows networking?

uSlackr
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Zoredache
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  • Might be a dumb question, but are the workstations part of the domain? I know XP/2003 needed a patch to enable previous versions. I don't know about 7 versions of Home/starter/etc. – MikeAWood Jun 12 '12 at 23:45
  • The machines I am uses are domain members, but is that a requirement? Do you have any documentation saying that domain membership is needed? – Zoredache Jun 13 '12 at 00:18
  • I've had 'previous versions' working without domain membership. Older OS's needed updates, but then it just worked. Don't think any ports need to be opened, but the Shadow Copy Service is required on the server. Also, domain admins can disable the client via GPO, so you may want to check that. – Martijn Heemels Jun 13 '12 at 00:31
  • I don't think domain membership is required, but I was thinking it might be a security issue accessing the previous versions if some users couldn't see it. Does it seem to be a per user or per machine issue? – MikeAWood Jun 13 '12 at 20:30
  • Just trying to clarify, is the previous versions tab there and not showing the proper checkpoints or is the previous versions tab not even visible to the user? – Rex Jun 20 '12 at 21:41
  • @Rex, sorry, I missed your comment. The clients have a Previous Version tab, but they from their perspective, there are no checkpoints. – Zoredache Jun 26 '12 at 18:08

3 Answers3

2

Make sure administrative shares are available. You can check using this KB Article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/842715/en-us

(Reviewers: It's too much to post it all here, so i'm just posting the link)

MichelZ
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  • What part of that article applies to Volume Snapshot Service? Do you have a reference that states admin share access is a requirement for end users to see Previous Versions? In any case I doubt this is a problem. – Zoredache Jun 26 '12 at 18:07
  • Actually, I suspect this is exactly the problem. The article may not mention it directly, but it does require access to the admin shares – Rex Jun 26 '12 at 18:25
  • There are many mentions of this in google, e.g. here: http://dreamlayers.blogspot.ch/2009/09/in-vista-previous-versions-tab-requires.html – MichelZ Jun 27 '12 at 07:12
1

Previous versions are not shown if you are accessing the share through DFS in certain configs such as nested DFS links. More here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2466048

uSlackr
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0

I got tired of this..can't seem to find a solid answer beyond using a command method with vssadmin or a Network share to access and/or restore the previous versions tab. This should have been a simple fix. restoring a file or folder from a command line can be frustrating to say the least.

I ended up using a windows 7 registry fix on my 2008 R2 server and it worked. So hopefully this can help someone in the future...Copy and paste the below in notepad and save it as a .reg file (remember to back up your registry before making any changes).

The Reg keys that were modified to make the tab show were: 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers\{596AB062-B4D2-4215-9F74-E9109B0A8153}]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{450D8FBA-AD25-11D0-98A8-0800361B1103}\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers\{596AB062-B4D2-4215-9F74-E9109B0A8153}]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers\{596AB062-B4D2-4215-9F74-E9109B0A8153}]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers\{596AB062-B4D2-4215-9F74-E9109B0A8153}]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
"NoPreviousVersionsPage"=-

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
"NoPreviousVersionsPage"=-

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\PreviousVersions]
"DisableLocalPage"=-

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
"NoPreviousVersionsPage"=-

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\PreviousVersions]
"DisableLocalPage"=-
Zoredache
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John
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