Wednesday 10 October 2007

Windows Live Messenger and Offline Files Balloon

On the system we use for data purposes, our Data Mule, we run the Mule user in restricted user mode all the time.

The Data Mule has received the Windows Live Beta updates via WSUS and Messenger is running.

WLM version: 2008 (Build 8.5.1288.816)

Whenever a new conversation is started, or a message window pops up while logged in as the restricted Mule user, an Offline Files balloon pops up at the same time.

This is consistent with every new message started or received.

One has to click on the balloon or the little Offline Files computer pretty much every time to restore the shared drives.

It doesn't seem to be happening on any other machines where the user is logged in as a local admin. But, it definitely bears further testing.

Good thing this is a beta! ;)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

3 comments:

stryqx said...

If the Test Mule is a Windows XP machine (it sounds like it from the description), try running:

csccmd /rsid

while the system is in Online mode.
This will restamp the files in the CSC with the restricted user SID, hopefully resolving the Offline issue.

I've had to do this in the past, especially when a shared folder is marked as an Offline Folder and is accessed by multiple users on the one PC.

If the Test Mule is Vista, then no such useful utility exists. You have to spend hours writing a WMI script to perform the same tasks that csccmd provides.

Philip Elder Cluster MVP said...

Chris,

I obtained CSCCMD 1.1 from PSS.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/884739

After copying it to a temporary directory under C, I ran the command:

csccmd /resid

About 3 minutes later, after a lot of scrolling in the window the command completed successfully.

Now we wait and see if it worked.

Thanks for that.

Philip

Philip Elder Cluster MVP said...

Chris,

Nope. It still happens, though not as frequently.

It almost seems that the new Messenger window kills the network connection for the shared drives.

It does not kill the Shoutcast stream that is piped into the shop via this machine at all. That doesn't blink when the Offline Files balloon shows up.

Hopefully this is just an isolated incident.

Philip