Gray X's On Files and Folders in Windows File Shares ~ Bauer-Power Media

Jan 28, 2013

Gray X's On Files and Folders in Windows File Shares

10:00 AM

Paul B

This is the first post from me here at Bauer-Power in what seems like ages. I'm sorry about that. Please note that I most certainly have not abandoned the blog here. I've just been really busy with my new political blog Mainwashed. If you have a few moments, go ahead and check it out.

Anyway, so I have this user at work who has been coming over to the IT area for the last few weeks with an issue that I'll admit, I hadn't seen before. We have disabled offline file caching on all workstations as well as on our Windows 2008 file server. Still though, she was still having a strange caching problem that would cause files and folders in one of her file shares to appear with a gray X on them, and she wouldn't be able to open them.

Also, if she saved a file, the update wouldn't actually make it over to the server. It would just store in the cache area on her computer. Strange right?

Here's a screen shot she sent me:

To fix it, what I had to do was to disable the Offline Files Service, and the Offline Files Driver, then format the CSC database. To do that create or modify the following registry entries on the affected machine, then reboot: