Can't resolve offline file conflicts

Posted by Bryan on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Bryan
Published on 2010-04-02T11:29:25Z Indexed on 2010/04/02 11:33 UTC
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We use roaming profiles on our Server 2008 R2 domain, with folder redirection for 'desktop', 'my documents' and 'application data'.

But as our network is split across two sites, we have one file server at each site, which are configured to use domain based DFS namespaces and DFS replication to keep things in sync.

The DFS path for the replication folder is as follows:

\\domain\folderredirection$\<username>\<redirected-folder-name>

The real paths are

\\site-1-server\folderredirection$\<username>\<redirected-folder-name>

and

\\site-2-server\folderredirection$\<username>\<redirected-folder-name>

As our users all switch between sites (sometimes several time per day), our folder redirection policy has to redirect to the DFS roots rather than hardcoded to a specific server.

Both DFS and DFS-R have been proven to be working perfectly.

On our laptops, we use offline files for the redirected folders, and this also works fine, however the problem is as follows:

When conflicts occur in offline files, it is impossible to resolve the conflicts.

I'm given the usual conflict resolution options (i.e. 'Ignore', 'Keep Both', 'Keep network' and 'Keep local'), however, not one of these options will resolve any conflict, yet no error is produced.

We only use offline files on laptops, which have either Windows XP Professional or Windows 7 Professional installed.

The problem is not specific to any one laptop, it affects every laptop and every conflicting file in exactly the same way.

I would have thought the set up we have is common for companies that have multiple sites, so I'm hoping someone will have seen this before?

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