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Here's a weird one. We have a printing company with a file server running Windows 2012. (Local user accounts; pretty much a plain vanilla setup.) The folks on the prepress team are using Macs to place files on the server. The production folks are using Windows 7 Pro workstations to pull them off and send them through the RIPs. There are two of these Windows workstations, configured to be (theoretically) identical. One of them always sees the files instantly, whenever it is uploaded to the server. On the other workstation, however, they do not see them, even after hitting 'F5' or refresh from the menu. If anybody using a Mac simply opens the folder on the server, then suddenly they show up. No changes or anything, simply accessing the folder, and wham. This symptom is only happening to the one Windows PC. Both are connected using the same user account, and both are using the same network settings (different IP address of course) and are located on the same subnet. Both have the same parent folder statically mapped to a drive letter (X:).

I've had very little luck in search results, trying to find out if anyone else has experienced anything remotely like this. So far, I have been unsuccessful, which leads me to believe that either it's a unique problem or my Google skills have degraded over time.

So I ask, "Has anyone else seen this behavior before? If so, do you know what causes it?"

Thanks!

quickthyme
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    Sounds like witch craft. Out of curiosity: What happens to the system that can't refresh the files if you remount the drive? Still doesn't appear until a MAC opens it? – Gravy Feb 02 '15 at 23:30
  • Witchcraft indeed! I still can't explain why opening the folder with a Mac causes the files to appear on the PC, but I was able to get the PC to see the files without that step. Turns out that the user account on the PC was somehow authenticating as guest on the Windows Server despite the user account and password being the same on both systems. So, I added a stored credential to the local account and now it seems to work more reliably. Not a complete answer though --shouldn't this work without having to do that? It seems to on the other PC... – quickthyme Feb 03 '15 at 18:10

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