Forum Discussion
Files on Demand randomly downloading and filling hard drives
Does this happen for only PDF files? I've never had issues with the search index forcing a download of "on demand" files, however I've seen other software causing issues (including some of the built-in Windows apps). You have an option to "block" such programs as detailed here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4042378/windows-10-automatic-file-download-notifications
Hi Vasil and thanks for responding.
No, it happens seemingly randomly and with all types of files. Here are two more examples:
I did find the article you mention, but there have been no notifications which could be clicked to initiate the block until I finally did see one yesterday. Unfortunately I was not fast enough to click it and it disappeared and did not remain in the notification area.
I think blocking SearchProtocolHost.exe from downloading files automatically without disabling the Windows Search service may be the key (at least temporarily) to an acceptable workaround, but I can't find a way to do that. This article:
https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/onedrive-demand-block-automatic-file-downloads/
details the registry key where blocked programs are listed:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\CloudFiles\BlockedApps
but our Windows 10 1803 installation doesn't even have the CloudFiles key, much less the BlockedApps key or any entries in it. If I could figure out how to define a value for SearchProtocolHost.exe (other than by clicking a notification that I have only seen pop up once for about a second) I think I might be on track to a solution.
Any third party indexing tools or add-ons being used so the files might get modified?.
Have the modified (or Accessed) time been updated to the time when it got downloaded?
And you are sure that there is no Group policy that can affect this?
Olav - thanks for the reply.
We are not using any third-party indexing tools and the files and their metadata are not being modified. The files are clearly being downloaded by SearchProtocolHost.exe, which is the Windows Search service, even though online-only files are not supposed to be indexed. As far as I can tell we have no group policy that is affecting this and we have non-domain-joined machines that are doing it as well which pretty much eliminates that possibility. We do have all of the machines managed through SCCM, but we aren't enforcing anything non-standard in terms of indexing or anything like that.
We are now finding this happening on Windows 1709 machines, too, so it's not just a recent development with rolling out 1803. I'm more suspicious that it's something in the latest binaries of OneDrive. With all of this experimentation I have discovered that Windows Search is tightly coupled to the Files on Demand function. If you disable Windows Search, the "Free up space" option will be greyed out in the menu unless you are clicking on a file or folder that has been made available locally. If Search is running, you can select "Free up space" from anywhere in the hierarchy and OneDrive/Windows will remove locally-stored copies from everywhere below that point.
I'm pretty frustrated as our whole Office 365 rollout strategy is based around this feature. I have tech support incidents in progress with both the OneDrive and Windows teams (who don't talk to each other!) and can't seem to get this escalated to someone who understands how this technology works better that I do!
I have three customers with the same issue, and myself. One I found was a Dell optimization tool that had Antivirus built into it. Each time the antivirus touched the file on demand it would download it. I have a couple open tickets with MS, but nothing resolved yet.
