T11M

So today wasn’t my best day for decision making. I had a user whose PC was set up with offline files through Windows Sync Center. This is all well and good except a group of files weren’t actually synced with the server. I realized this so I went in to the conflict section of sync center and forced it to put the files on the server. In my haste to finish up this problem and move on to the next, I didn’t double check the actual server to ensure the files were there prior to disabling offline files.  Of course given my luck, as soon as offline files are disabled all the files disappear.  So now I’m looking at a disgruntled client who believes I just lost hours of work and I’m wondering to myself how to recover them. After a considerable amount of time scouring the web I didn’t find any cut and dried instructions on how to solve my problem so here is the solution I used:

1. Prepare the client for the worst.
2. Pray that Google has the answer and start searching.
3. Open a cmd prompt as administrator
4. Change directory to C:\windows\CSC\
5. Run a takeown command to give the local admins group owndlership of all the files in that directory. This command will grant ownership of all files and folders to the local admins group: takeown /A /R

6. Wait for takeown to process all of the files in the directory. For me this process took about an hour.
7. Once takeown has finished you should be able to browse the folders and find your lost documents. If the file wasn’t cached it will show up as a 0 KB file. If it was you will see that it has a file size greater than 0.
8. Now that you have ownership of the files you still must grant your account full access rights to the file in order to move or copy it. If you are trying to recover a lot of files this is best done using the cacls command. I was only recovering a few so I did not want to waste the time getting my syntax right.
9. Copy or move the files to a location of your choice.

A lot of work for a few files, but whatever the client needs right?

So I finally was able to download the Windows 7 Beta. What a pain! They require ActiveX controls to be installed, which pretty much rules out downloading with an OS X only machine. So anyway, I finally got it downloaded using a PC at work.  Now on to the install…

9:30 am – I’m using VMware Fusion to load it as a virtual machine.  I chose all default settings, install from ISO image, and using Windows Vista settings (VMware doesn’t currently support Windows 7, but that’s expected).  Started the install.

9:50 am – Holy crap!  I’ve never installed any version of Windows that fast, let alone a beta.  I’m astounded.  Oh, and VMware tools is installing automatically.  I’m very impressed.  It’s as if Microsoft wants this product to be good!

9:55 am – VMware tools installed perfectly and readjusted my video settings.

10:00 am – Verified that VMware tools are actually working.

10:02 am – Entered Unity mode.  It’s really smooth and fast.  That’s a testament to both VMware and Windows 7.

10:05 am – Just for kicks I bound it to the domain at work.  I’ve never tested that before.

10:08 am – Waiting for my roaming profile to load.  It’s taking quite a bit of time, but that is the common experience so far in all Windows OS configurations.

10:11 am – Roaming profile loaded properly.  None of the logon scripts we have configured worked.  It said it couldn’t find the network resources… have to investigate that.

10:12 am – All of the network resources appear to be available.  I wonder if it is a problem with roaming profiles and VMware Fusion…?

10:16 am – Uh oh… Tried to restart to finish installing updates and got a Windows alert asking if I wanted to Force Quit applications or Cancel and close them myself.  Clicked Cancel and now just the background visible.

10:17 am – Ctrl-Alt-Delete allowed me to restart just fine.  Configuring Windows update and rebooting.

10:30 am – Installing Microsoft Office 2007.  At this point I am an hour in and have a very functional OS, not to mention it is inside of a Virtual Machine.  It seems like all of the software I have that worked in Vista is going to work just fine in Windows 7.  Nice.  Props to you Microsoft.  Props to you.