How do I delete offline files/folders from laptop

[Guest]

I'm running Vista Business(laptop). I enabled a folder(on my desktop running
XP) to be available offline. I was haveing some issues and somehow sync'd
the folder 3 times under different names.... Now I have a bunch of files on
the laptop (20gigs) that will not delete. How do I delete these not longer
needed offline file shares from my computer. I click delete and it says they
are being deleted, but, they are still there.

Thanks......

 

[Shubhankar Sanyal [MSFT]]

Hi,
Are the shares in question still present on the server (the XP machine if I
understand correctly)?
Did you try to delete these files through the control panel->Offline files?

Thanks

 

[Guest]

The files are still present, but i changed the name of the folder. I did
that a few times for the same folder. Now I would just rather use a
different method to keep these files in sync, however I have this folder
copied onto the laptop hard drive 3 times taking up 20 gigs. I'd like to
just delete all those files.

Thanks....

 

[Shubhankar Sanyal [MSFT]]

Did you try to delete these files through the control panel->Offline files?
If not, how did you try it?
We have encountered some issues while deleting entries from the offline
files cache in certain scenarios. There might be a qfe to address this in
the future. In the mean time, one option is to reinitialize your entire
offline files cache. However this will mean that you will have to make the
folders of interest available offline again. You will also lose any unsynced
changes.

Thanks

 

[Guest]

I did try control panel-> Offline files. I tell it to delete the files, it
says it is deleting them, but they are still there. So this is how it went:
I folder named "A" that I made available offline. There was a problem then
seeing other shared folders. I played around with it and finally changed the
name of the file to "B". Same thing happened with not being able to see
other files, it would say they were offline when I knew they were online. So
I tried on more time and changed the the file name to "C". Everything is
working fine now except the files from the first two syncs are still there
eating up nearly 20gigs of space.

I have since played with synctoy and have that working well and no longer
need to use the offline files feature and would like to delete all files
associated with it.

Thank you very much for your help.

 

[Shubhankar Sanyal [MSFT]]

Hi,
Could you elaborate on what you mean by - "There was a problem then seeing
other shared folders"?

To reset the offline files cache, perform the following steps(note - you'll
lose everything that you made available offline on the client):
1.. In registry, create a DWORD value called FormatDatabase under
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\CSC\Parameters. To this value, assign
the value of 1.
2.. Restart the computer.
Thanks,
Shubhankar

 

[Guest]

The folder I wanted to be available offline was one of many(my entire my
documents) that I had available for sharing on my network. after the sync
process it would not let me access the other files in my docs. It had a grey
x by the folder and said that the folder was "offline" when my wife's my
docs worked fine, so I know the network was working ok. I disabled sharing
for the my docs folder, changed the name and then enabled sharing again and
everything worked fine. I then tried to make one of the folders available
offline and the same thing happened. I tried a third time and it seems to
have worked fine. However, now that I know about synctoy, that really meets
my needs better. I just need to know how to delete all the files that my
laptop thinks it is holding for me to be available offline.

Thanks

 

[Shubhankar Sanyal [MSFT]]

The steps to reset the offline files cache were in my previous mail. Let me
know if you have any problems with that. If you decide to use Offline Files
again, I would love to help debug the issue you were seeing. It's not
something we've seen before.

Thanks

 

[Guest]

I'm not tech savy enough to understand your directions to clear the files.
Can you give me a step by step? Thanks

 

[Shubhankar Sanyal [MSFT]]

I didn't realize that not everyone uses the registry regularly (in fact we
discourage it.) My apologies.
Run the following command from an elevated command prompt and then restart
the machine:
REG ADD "HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\CSC\Parameters" /v
FormatDatabase /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

To start an elevated command prompt, right click on cmd in your start menu
and select "Run as administrator"

Thanks

 

[Michael A. Bishop \(MSFT\)]

Speaking from personal experience, rather than professional position:

I had a share that I made available offline, then deleted (you renamed, but
same difference as far as CSC is concerned). Offline Files kept failing to
sync, because it couldn't reach that location. It picks up deleted
directories under what's been made available offline, but if your offline
folder itself is deleted, it will just insert its cached copy there and
never acknowledge that it's missing.

Try creating a blank directory that matches the name, syncing, making it not
available offline, then deleting the duplicate directory again.

 

[Guest]

I had the same problem boomer49 did. The ghost bug was one contributer to the
issue, but the other was this whole UAC business. Even from my admin account,
I had to disable UAC or force the offline files control panel applet to run
with full admin rights either from an administrative command prompt or
shortcut:

C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe cscui.dll,CSCOptions_RunDLL

Without the full admin rights, it "pretended" to delete the files from the
cache, but nothing effectively happened.

 

[Guest]

I tried the following command from an elevated prompt: REG ADD
"HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\CSC\Parameters" /v
FormatDatabase /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

and got the following message:

ERROR: Invalid syntax.
Type “REG ADD /?†for usage.

What at I doing wrong?

Thanks