Posts Tagged ‘SkyDrive’

Another Fix for OneDrive / SkyDrive When Resetting and File Permissions Fixes Fail

Posted: January 8, 2015 in fix, Microsoft, OneDrive, SkyDrive, tip, Windows 8
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I’ve discussed at length how to fix SkyDrive sync issues. Check out Another possible solution for OneDrive / SkyDrive sync issues and Possible OneDrive / SkyDrive sync fix for Windows 8. I have found that sometimes even resetting SkyDrive doesn’t fix the problem. Microsoft will charge you for a brute force approach, but I figured out one more option if nothing you’ve tried has started syncing back up again. Before you follow these steps, try the other two – this is a last ditch resort!

1. Make sure all other desktop and “modern” applications are NOT running. Only File Explorer should be running. Word, Chrome, whatever – they should all be closed.

2. Press Windows Key + X, select Command Prompt (Admin), and the Windows command prompt should appear.

3. Make sure the OneDrive app isn’t running – right-click it and select Close if you see it in the taskbar.

4. Type skydrive /shutdown

5. Wait a minute.

6. Right-click the task bar and select Task Manager.

7. Keep trying to end the OneDrive Sync Engine process until it disappears, as shown in the figure below. This may take a few tries.

image

8. Open the following folder:
C:\Users\your user account name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\SkyDrive\settings
and you’ll see something like the figure below:

image

9. Delete all the files except for ClientPolicy.ini and global.ini.

10. Once they have been deleted, type the following: shutdown -r -t 0

11. Your computer should restart.

12. Log back in and your files should start resyncing. You’ll probably see results within a few hours. This will depend on the total number of files you have on OneDrive. You’ll also see downloads.txt and another funky-looking file start growing in size. If you see that, you know things are working, and OneDrive has started rebuilding everything.

Breaking down the SkyDrive process (Updated)

Posted: January 7, 2015 in hacking, Microsoft, SkyDrive, Windows, Windows 8
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I’ve been underwhelmed by Microsoft’s response for documentation regarding SkyDrive and its inner workings. So, I’m on a mission to break things down. I’ll update this blog post as I find more information. As always, any info provided here is used at your own risk. I take no responsibility if you hose a system.

In case you want to see all the SkyDrive process settings:

C:\Users\<your account name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\SkyDrive\settings

There are two files of interest:

global.ini and ClientPolicy.ini

There were some settings that surprised me in ClientPolicy.ini:

  • MaxFileSizeBytes = 2147483647 Is the 2 GB max file size mentioned on MSFT’s site? They should probably mention that, since all shipping systems are 64-bit and video files and ISOs can be pretty big.
    • Update 7-Jan-2015: It appears Microsoft has upped this to 10 terabytes.
  • Tier1MaxFileSizeBytes = 2147483647 These would be Microsoft’s Office file types
  • Tier1FileInclusionList = |doc|docm|docx|dot|dotm|dotx|odc|odp|ods|odt|pot|potm|potx|pps|ppsm|ppsx|ppt|pptm|pptx|rtf|vdw|vdx|vsd|vsdm|vsdx|vssm|vssx|vst|vstm|vstx|vsw|vsx|vtx|xla|xlam|xlm|xls|xlsb|xlsm|xlsx|xlt|xltm|xltx|xlw|
  • MaxItemsInOneFolder = 150000 I wonder if this caused my earlier sync problems, since I had more than 150K files in a folder, and then I deleted the folder. Maybe that messed up Microsoft’s storage system in the cloud? When I finally had a Microsoft technician look at my account, things magically started working a day later. I didn’t change anything, but what happened on their end?
  • MaxClientMBTransferredPerDay = 131072
    • Update 7-Jan-2015: It appears Microsoft has upped this to over 250000. Makes sense, given average home broadband speeds.
  • MaxClientRequestsPerDay = 500000 So what happens if you reach your limit?
  • NumberOfConcurrentUploads = 3 I’d rather have more, but it appears the next setting helps here, even though it’s not accessible via the SkyDrive app.
  • AllowUserOverrideOfConcurrentUploads = true
  • SyncTelemetryURL = http://wlepsi3.redmond.corp.microsoft.com/SyncDiag.ashx This one bothers me a bit. What is this URL tracking? And why isn’t it over SSL?
  • LowDiskSpaceLimitMB = 3072 If you want to override the low disk space limit… I’m going to try this on my Dell Venue Pro 8. Update: It worked! Yay!
    • Update 7-Jan-2015: It appears Microsoft has lowered this to 200MB. Much better for tablets! Of course, in the future, tablets will probably have 64GB, 128GB or more by default due to lowered storage costs.
  • AutomaticVerboseLoggingEnabled = true I wonder where the log file is. There’s one in this folder, but it’s used by the SkyDrive process. I’ll play with that in a VM so I don’t mess anything up Smile

I’m also curious as to why SkyDrive.exe can’t be opened in a decompiler. If I request it, the file system says the file doesn’t exist. Is c:\windows\system32\SkyDrive.exe simply a shim? Very interesting.

Breaking down the SkyDrive process, I found what appears to be additional command line parameters. I have not tested these as of yet.

/shutdown
/register
/unregister
/installperfcounters
/uninstallperfcounters
/background
/watson

Until next time… enjoy!

Best,

-Auri

Why isn’t OneDrive smart about tablets?

Posted: May 30, 2014 in Apps, Dell, Microsoft, OneDrive, SkyDrive, tablet, Venue Pro, Windows 8
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Quick thought for the day: Microsoft’s OneDrive doesn’t appear to act “smart” when it’s installed on a tablet, or what I prefer to call a Limited Storage Space Device. The premise of OneDrive is clear: store your stuff in the cloud and keep your device clean of clutter, holding local only what you need. Google made the same business case with their Chromebooks and Google Drive, but “cloud-first” is in its teenage years.

On a Limited Storage Device, such as a tablet or a phone, OneDrive should be smart enough to take offline, locally cached files, and make them “online only” again, freeing up the space. It doesn’t do this, and thus silently, and sometimes quickly, eats up storage on the device. Case in point: I recently drove Tail of the Dragon and took hundreds of photos. About one gigabyte of these I copied from my camera to OneDrive. One day later, my Dell Venue Pro 8 tablet started complaining of low drive space. OneDrive had copied the files from the cloud to the device, automatically, even though there was no reason to do so. The device wasn’t requesting those files. Yet, even if for whatever reason there was a valid request, shouldn’t OneDrive have “put them back” in the Cloud?

Microsoft – if you ever listen about device categories you’ve had a tough time understanding – you can’t treat these limited storage devices like mainstream PCs. You have to, pardon the pun, “think differently” and make your software do the same. The above scenario, where your Cloud solution makes a non-mainstream device relatively unusable due to a mainstream PC approach, is very common amongst your current product offerings. My gosh, just look at Office on a tablet.

Thanks for listening Smile

-Auri

SkyDrive Bug: Deleting Items fills Recycle Bin on ALL Connected Devices

Posted: December 28, 2013 in Apps, fix, Operating Systems, SkyDrive, tablet, Windows 8
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I’ve posted this in Microsoft’s forums, but in case anyone else is running into this issue, I’d like to know…

Situation:

– I have a home security camera. All motion detected photos are saved to a folder on a home machine, located in my local SkyDrive folder. I forgot to clean up this folder, so there were hundreds of thousands (~90 gigs) of files in the individual daily folders in this folder.

– On SkyDrive.com, to speed up the delete process, I deleted all folders I no longer wanted. Remember, this is 90 gigs or so. I figured this would delete those files from my home machine.

– Upon deletion, SkyDrive started copying all those deleted files to *every connected device’s Recycle Bin*, including my Windows tablet with its scant 32 gig drive!!!

– Now all my machines’ primary drives are filling up due to the Recycle Bin being filled by SkyDrive. This is especially troubling on the tablet, which is crashing often due to being out of space as it fills up every 30 mins or so, syncing over WiFi. No, I don’t have SkyDrive set to sync any folders to that device.

– All machines are running Windows 8.1. The tablet came with 8.1, and the desktops and laptop were upgraded to 8.1 from 8.0.

Bug:

– If a file is deleted on SkyDrive, it should not immediately be transferred to all connected devices. This is especially true for tablets.

Solutions / Workarounds:

– None known.

– Feature request possibility: This should be a feature that can be enabled or disabled, and disabled by default.

– Fix: Microsoft should disable the copying of deleted files to all connected devices, and come up with a better solution for handling this scenario.

I’m looking forward to feedback, as this has caused tremendous amounts of trouble in my ability to use Windows devices. It’s almost pointless to have a Windows tablet, since my online SkyDrive activity is not cognisent (sp?) of what device types to which its connected.

Thanks,

-Auri