Slow file browsing on Windows 7 with DFS and Offline Files

Today I troubleshooted a problem at a customer that we are migrating. They are running Windows 7 and their file shares are presented through DFS. All of the clients are using Folder Redirection and the laptops are also using Offline Files.

We have set up a policy that specifys the slow link threshold for Offline Files to 10 Gb/s which has the effect that the computer always is always offline and thus the user is always accessing the local file cache.

Now to the problem… when the user browsed the Offline Files in the redirected Offline Folder we experienced a delay every time we changed folder. This delay was only present when Documents was redirected to the DFS share. Since the computer was in offline mode this delay should not be present, all files access should be made locally. When the computer was completely disconnected, the delay went away.

I connected both the DFS share and the target share to a drive letter and made it available offline – no delay.

The problem turned out to be a bug with the combination of DFS, Folder Redirection, Offline Files and Library and on top of that a high latency.

The hotfix and a better explanation can be found here.

/Johan