Windows 7, BitLocker, Offline Files and "Access Denied"

Scenario:-

Windows 7 Enteprise Edtion x64 (64-bit) member of a Domain

Office 2007 Professional Plus with Service Pack 2

Windows Server 2003 Appliance Edition with NAS as file server.

Documents Folder is redirected to a network share ie file://myfileserver/users$/myname/documents

Computer is connected to the network and authenticated in the domain.

Offline Files is enabled and has been synchronising with no problems.

Share and NTFS permissions are set correctly and you have been able to open and save files with no problems.

BitLocker is subsequently used to encrypt the system drive

Symptoms:-

Accessing any file from the documents folder produces "Access Denied"

Includes Office 2007 documents, Adobe PDF's, Notepad files etc

Workaround:-
Option 1 - Edit Offline Files settings and unencrypted Offline Files
Option 2 - Disable Offline Folders, restart the computer and connect to the share (files no longer available when not connected to the network).

The Background:-
Found a frustrating issue that has been bugging me all day.

Everytime I try to open a file stored on my redirected Documents folder I get "Access Denied" even though the file server is up and running, permissions are set correctly and logging on the server shows I'm authenticating successfully.

By default, Windows 7 enables Offline Files for redirected folders and quietly synchronises all the files to a special system database. It is located in C:\Windows\CSC which is protected from users (yes, even administrators) by an ACL and Encyrpted.

The problem on my computer is that when I subsequently enabled BitLocker on the system partition, everytime I tried to access any file on my redirected Documents folder I got "Access denied".

I discovered that if I turn off Offline Files and reboot then I am able to access the files no problem.

This narrowed down, I tried reformating the Offline Files Database using the registry key below.

HEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\CSC\Parameters\FormatDatabase
D-WORD (32-BIT) Value = 1

I re-enabled Offline Files, added the registry Key and rebooted. Same problem existed.

Finally, I unencrypted my Offline Files and as if by magic the problem disappeared. I've rebooted now several times and the problem has not come back. I tested this again by encrypting the Offline Files and immediately the problem came back.

So the moral of my story is don't use BitLocker on the system partition and Offline Files with the default encryption of Offline Files. Go in and unencrypt Offline Files first.

Hope this post helps another frustrated user find the issue quicker than I did :-)