Fixing the "Cant determine Server Date and time" Error in DWMX

Some of you may have experienced the following when using Dreamweaver to connect to a Serv_U FTP server 4.

"Dreamweaver cannot determine the remote servers date and time. The sychronize feature is not available"

What a deadset pain. Why does this happen? How can we get it to work properly?

Read on and with a small amount of effort, all will be back to normal and you will be synchronizing files left, right and centre.

First lets answer WHY it is happening. This can be explained by 2 reasons:

1. There is a bug in Serv_U FTP 4 server that will convert all uploaded files and folders to lowercase whether you want them to be or not. Not your fault, it just happens.

2. When DW connects to the FTP server it creates a folder called XYIZNWSK gets the Date and time then removes it. You can see this in your FTP Logs as MKD XYIZNWSK and RMD XYIZNWSK. Notice the CAPS?

So here is the problem. DW attempts to write the folder in CAPS, Serv_U converts it to lowercase, DW attempts to read the Date time from a folder the file system on the remote server which doesn't exist. If you look on the remote view in DW you will see the XYIZNWSK in lowercase. When you click on it to view or remove the folder you get an error saying no such folder exists. Confused? Well thats about as difficult as it gets.

Now lets look at how we can fix it.

This turned out to be quite simple.

1. Go to your DWMX installation folder. (eg. C:\program files\Macromedia\Dreamweaver MX\) and backup your dreamweaver.exe file.

2. Now open the dreamweaver.exe file in a HEX editor such as the one here http://www.hhdsoftware.com/ and search for XYIZNWSK.

3. Once you have located the UPPERCASE XYIZNWSK just replace it with a lowercase xyiznwsk by carefully typing it in and SAVE the file.

4. Open DW and connect to your remote server and you are back in business.

If you have any probs just copy your backup of the dreamweaver.exe file back to the directory and all is sweet. Dont be too shy about making the changes. It isn't that difficult if you are careful and we have every faith in you.

Happy synchronizing, Cheers