Unable to open archived files

Are you getting any errors in the eventlog on either the file server or the ev server on that time where a user tries to open a shortcut which fails?

edit: Oh and also: this little clock icon is normal as it is the windows icon for files moved to an offline storage. You can verify that it is a placeholder by looking at the file attributes. Placeholders have the O (offline) attribute set.

The screen shot you sent seems to correspond to the icon for an archived item that has been converted to a PH shortcut. Could you please send another screen shot showing the icon when you say it is a shortcut than can be accessed?

If the PH shortcut icon is not behaving consistently, it could mean that another driver is interfering. Are there other 3rd party applications that installed a filter driver? You can check this from the command prompt by using the command   fltmc  

this will list all the drivers that are currently loaded on the file server. Please copy the output here.

As Simon B has suggested, the EVT may also provide more information that could help

@Rob When we are able to open the file, the icon appears as a small x mark and its like the file is hidden or translucent. After the placeholder service is restarted on the File Server the clock like icon seems to change to the x icon and file are accessible again. The last major change was upgrade of EV to 9.0.1 and upgrade of FSA agent to 9.0.1 from 8 SP3. I will get screenshot of icon and also post the output of filter driver by tomorrow morning. Thanks!

I think I know what you refer to. Starting with Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 (maybe also vista/server 2008) the offline files got assigned another icon by microsoft (this transculent icon with an X). The symbol you've attached as screenshot in our first post is how the placeholders should still appear when you browse the share with XP/Server 2003 machines.

As the symbol is something the client on which you browse the share decides it should not be related to whether you are able to open the shortcuts or not. Do you really have cases where on the same client machine you get both types of symbols?

It might be worth a try to completely uninstall the FSA Agent on the file server and then reinstall it again

Yes, what Simon B is saying does make sense. In Win2008 / Windows 7, the way the icons are rendered by the OS is different than what we see in win2003 / XP.

Here is an important consideration, being the fact that the rendering of the icon is not controlled by EV but by the OS. EV (FSA) will purely set the Offline attribute which is what triggers Explorer.exe to display the icon.

So, if there is some inconsistency in the way the icon is being displayed I suspect there might be a driver conflict or as Simon B suggested, re-installing the FSA Agent might help.

Thanks for explainig about the icons. It makes sense now. Some clients are using Windows XP and others Windows 7. When the PH shortcuts don't work then it will obviously impact both users.

Symantec support was contacted to look at the issue to see if the FSA agent was causing any issues on the Windows File server cluster. After troubleshooting it was concluded that there was some issue with the MSCS which caused the nodes to failover after which the PH shortcuts did not work until the EV Placeholder service was restarted. So contacting Microsoft support to look at the issue.

As newer FSA clients are compatible with older server versions you could try to install the FSA agent 9.0.2 on the cluster to see if this fixes the error (in case something points into the direction that something is wrong with the FSA agent).

Symantec is currently developing a fix for this issue as the issue was found to be with the EV Services running on  the File Server causing the File Server to crash.