Larry’s Things .net

Super Get  Info

http://www.barebones.com/products/super/

http://www.gideonsoftworks.com/filexaminer.html

and just in case the article at   http://www.macwindows.com/servtips.html   disappears,  this appears useful:

Disappearing icons on mounted Windows NT Server volumes on Macs

The next four articles discuss problems of disappearing file icons.

1. Microsoft Windows NT Server 3.51, 4.0, files disappear from mounted server volumes on Macs

Files on the mounted server volume on Mac clients disappear, but are still visible on Windows clients and from the server. This is an acknowledged Microsoft bug that was fixed with Windows NT Service Pack 3 for Windows NT 4.0. In July of 1997 Microsoft created a “hotfixed” version of Sfmsrv.sys file (available by calling Microsoft technical support). Microsoft recommends rebuilding Macintosh volumes after applying the hot fix. However, Service Pack 4 fixes a variety of bugs with Windows NT 4.0, and is recommended by Microsoft.Directly below are several methods of recovering files that have disappeared.2. Microsoft Windows NT 4 Server — When server crashes, files disappear from mounted server volumes on MacsOne disappearing-icons problem that NT Service Pack 3 doesn’t fix occurs when a Windows NT 4.0 Server running Services for Macintosh crashes. After rebooting the NT server, Macintosh users may find that random files are missing from the NT volumes, though the files are visible to Windows 95 users who access the same volumes, but not the Macs, no matter what you do. Running chkdsk or any other disk management tool will not help. Consultant Greg Barry warns NOT to move the files with a Windows 95 PC, or “corruption is guaranteed.”Cause of the Problem:The AFP volume indexes are stored in RAM on the server and are used by the Services for Macintosh file server. The SFM process manages the indexes for each volume constantly and makes heavy use of RAM for this processing. These indexes are written to disk at shutdown and may be written at other un-documented times. When the server crashes, the indexes are lost and the old ones are read from disk. These indexes are responsible for the contents of the AFP volumes that the user sees. Even when SFM is stopped and started, the files do not come back.Solution:This is a known Microsoft by that was fixed in the June, 1998 hotfix called sfm-fixi.exe, which enables SFM to rebuild the indexes upon restart after a crash. This is the multiple-bug hotfix that includes fixes for 10 SFM Service Pack 3 bugs, including the Jumping icon fix.Alternate solution:Chris Pepper offers this manual approach:

I was able to clear this problem by moving the missing files into a different directory (existing or newly created; could be a subdirectory of the affected directory), and then moving them back, on the server itself. As soon as the files were moved, they showed up on the Mac; they remained visible after moving them back.

Another method of updating the index file:Jerry Lees sent in a method that he uses to prevent the problem of Mac files disappearing from NT Server. He is Running NT 4 SP 5.

I too have found this to be a problem on my network. I have not done a lot of tracing to find the source of the problem… mainly because I have found a patch to the problem that I can run periodically.Basically, I have a batch file that runs nightly and renames the files like this:ren *.jpg *.jalren *.jal *.jpgren *.htm *.jalren *.jal *.htmAnd so forth. This forces the index to be updated and rebuilt.

3. Microsoft Windows NT 4 Server — Recovering files that disappear from mounted server volumes on Macs.If you don’t yet have the sfm-fix hotfix mentioned above, Kevin van Haaren of HNTB Corporation sent us this method of recovering files that disappeared from the Macs but were still visible from Windows machines. This method does not require rebooting the NT server or Mac clients.

1. Get all users to dismount the volume
2. Remove the volume
3. Apply file-level permissions on all sub-directories (from Windows Explorer) with just Administrators full-control
4. Recreate mac volume setting the permissions as needed

Joe Clarke adds that simply recreating the Mac volumes forces a desktop rebuild with all the icons restored. Things that must be addressed after using this procedure are custom volume icon (if any) disappearance, and icon rearrangment.4. NT jumping icon hotfix created a disappearing icon bug.Microsoft says that the hotfix for the jumping icons bug (and other bugs) created a new bug on volumes with large numbers of files. With over 10,000 or so files on a volume, the SFM hotfix causes some file icons to disappear from mounted volumes on Macs. Upon rebuilding the Mac volume, the server can occasionally crash.Microsoft said that NT 4.0 Service Pack 4 fixed this new problemThis also might fix the problem:

Method 5

If the issue exists in a volume that is part of a folder (for example, D:\Public), type the following command at a command prompt:

dir > d:\public:afp_idindex

If you are rebuilding a root drive share such as C:\ or D:\, type the following command at a command prompt:

dir > d:\:afp_idindex

NOTE: This command intentionally damages the index of the Macintosh volume. After SFM is stopped and restarted, the damage forces Windows NT to rebuild the index on that volume immediately. If an “access denied” error message occurs, the volume may be in use by opened files or the folder is being shared for personal computer access. Disable all programs and file sharing to prevent this error message.

After SFM is restarted and the index is complete, an event is logged in Event Viewer. If the volume is large in size, it may take several minutes before all volumes and files are visible by the Macintosh client. Avoid stopping the SFM service at this time.
The following error will appear when you corrupt the volume index:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 at 05:32 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.