SyncToy Reboots Network Computer

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Guest

I am trying to use SyncToy to synchronize files between a laptop and a
desktop on a home network. The laptop is connected by a wireless router.
SyncToy is on the Laptop. When SyncToy tries to Combine files between the
two, files from the desktop transfer to the laptop, but when it tries to send
files to the desktop, the desktop reboots. The files are stored under My
Documents folder which has been set to share and allow network computers to
write to the files. The firewalls on both computers are disabled. Both
computers use Windows XP, the laptop uses the professional version. I can
write files to the desktop using Windows Explorer. Has anyone experienced
this problem and solved it? I would appreciate your help.
 
I assume that when you say that you can write files to the desktop using
Windows Explorer that you are saying that you can use Windows Explorer on the
laptop to copy files from the laptop to the desktop ... correct.

I have not been overly happy with a number of things in Sync Toy so I don't
use it much. I think Sync Toy is just a nicely human factored front end for
file copying that eventually boils down to normal Window's APIs that send
SMBs across the network. It does not matter if one system is using NTFS and
the other one FAT/FAT32.

That said, violation of file permissions, etc. should not result in a
reboot! You should not have to drop your firewall to do file copies. It is
most likely that something is wrong in the OS at your desktop. I would start
by checking to see that you have not run out of disk space and then follow
that with a scandisk to make sure that there is nothing wrong with the disk
structure (actually this should have occurred during the system reboot ...
did you look closely at the messages).

I do file transfers between multiple machines on my home LAN all the time.
I did run into a bug in Windows 2K SP4 when I had hyperthreading enabled on
one machine and I turned off hyperthreading to avoid it ... the bug was known
and was in TCP/IP.

Did you notice the error code on the blue screen and do a knowledge base
search? That is how I found out about the TCP/IP bug in W2K.

Good luck.
 
Williamantic

Thanks for your reply. I can copy files from my laptop to the desktop from
the laptop using Windows Explorer. But when I try to use SyncToy on the
laptop to do the same thing, it reboots the desktop computer. When the
desktop starts up again, it sends info to Microsoft because a nonstandard
shutdown of Outlook occured. I then get a message from Microsoft saying that
the problem is a device driver, but I have no idea which device driver is
causing the problem but I have never had the problem until I tried
transferring files to the desktop using SyncToy on the laptop. I did not
notice the error message number. That is a good idea to try googling the
error message number. I still think the problem has to lie with SyncToy.

I have certainly not run out of disk space on the desktop. I have over 100
GB unused on the harddrive. Not sure what hyperthreading is or how to find
out if it is on or off. Since Windows XP is based on 2000, maybe the same
bug carried over. Whatever it is it is real strange.
 
I don't think the hyperthreading problem is in XP. Hyperthreading is an
Intel feature on Pentium 4's where one CPU can act as 2. This came before
dual core where you get 2 real CPUs on one large chip or something like that.
Now I think the dual core chips can also run hyperthreading thus giving you
the appearance of 4 CPUs. The problem in W2K's TCP/IP was related to a
machine that had multiple CPUs.

Unless Sync Toy has really gone out of its way, I have to think it is using
the standard network file interfaces. After all you installed it only on
your laptop and while it could have caused stuff to get installed on your
desktop you should have seen something saying that was being done. I have
installed it on one of my machines and as far as I know nothing got installed
on my other machines.

I don't use Outlook:-) Is it possible that you are resyncing your Outlook
mail files between the desktop and the laptop? If so, try eliminating the
Outlook files from what Sync Toy is working with to see if the problem is
unique to Outlook files. I have no idea but possibly Outlook has special
hooks in network file services to support doing stuff with its files. If the
problem only happens when Outlook files are being resynced then you might try
either Google or the MS Knowledge database to see if you can find something
relative to Outlook and file syncing.

Good luck.
 
Good thought. But I did not include Outlook in the files I was syncing. I
did have Outlook open however. Maybe I should try closing Outlook first.
Don't know what else to try. Tough problem.
 
I just reread your previous post and I think I may have read too much into
your Outlook comment. It could be that whatever is causing XP to shutdown on
your desktop machine is just taking Outlook down abnormally such that when XP
reboots the Outlook application is just reporting this and Outlook really is
not involved in the failure. In any case, by shutting down Outlook 1st, you
should eliminate this error report. Then the real problem might be more
visible.

Good luck.
 
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