How to find file causing backup failure Access Denied 0x80070005?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dick Watson
  • Start date Start date
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Dick Watson

Apparently at least one "Document" file on my Vista laptop is causing File
Backup to fail "Access Denied" 0x80070005.

I read lots of google on this but most points to something like:

"This error occurs because the recovery partition is enabled for File Backup
or System Restore
and is almost full. To work around this, do not select D:\ as a backup
source. Also, go to
System Protection in Control Panel and make sure that D:\ is not enabled for
restore points."

This is on an external disk so none of that stuff would seem to apply. If I
unselect "Documents" from the stuff to be backed up, it works fine. When it
fails, some files have been backed up successfully. But there doesn't seem
to be any useful logging or error event reporting to help narrow it down
finer than this. I even tried it with UAC disabled. Still no joy.

The machine is also being backed up by WHS nightly with no apparent
problems.

Any suggestions how to narrow this down to the "Document" file(s) Vista
Backup is unhappy about??!?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts.
 
Dick said:
Apparently at least one "Document" file on my Vista laptop is causing
File Backup to fail "Access Denied" 0x80070005.

I read lots of google on this but most points to something like:

"This error occurs because the recovery partition is enabled for File
Backup or System Restore
and is almost full. To work around this, do not select D:\ as a backup
source. Also, go to
System Protection in Control Panel and make sure that D:\ is not enabled
for restore points."

This is on an external disk so none of that stuff would seem to apply.
If I unselect "Documents" from the stuff to be backed up, it works fine.
When it fails, some files have been backed up successfully. But there
doesn't seem to be any useful logging or error event reporting to help
narrow it down finer than this. I even tried it with UAC disabled. Still
no joy.

The machine is also being backed up by WHS nightly with no apparent
problems.

Any suggestions how to narrow this down to the "Document" file(s) Vista
Backup is unhappy about??!?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts.
Click to expand...

Access Denied means that the user account the back-up application is
running under doesn't have the rights needed to access something,
usually a file, or folder. And you're admin account that Vista gives you
may not have the rights, because it's not an admin account that has full
rights to access it.

You disable "Documents" in the backup and it works, then something in
"Documents" is denying access. You need to find the file or folder.
You know that some files have backed up successfully so you have some
kind of list and possible area as to where those files are at physically
on the drive. You need to start in that area in look at folder and
file permissions.

On the other hand and if it was me, I would just login with this admin
account that does have full rights, and see if it works.

You probably find shorter instructions.

<http://www.computerworld.com/s/arti...e_true_Administrator_account_in_Windows_Vista>
 
The issue is that backing up "Documents" in Vista does not just back up your
personal "My Documents" folder or all "My Documents" folders. It goes on a
promiscuous, file extension based, sweep of the entire machine. It backs up,
for instance, .HTM files in \Program Files that are dropped by application
installations. You don't have any explicit control over what it includes in
that bucket by folder, file, or file extension. If you haven't played around
with Vista Backup, you probably don't appreciate that it doesn't allow you
to pick specific files and folders to backup. FWIW, one gets 73,000 hits in
google for 'vista backup what were they thinking?'.

By inspecting the failed backup, I observed that the backup had files and
folders from the \$WINDOWS.~Q\ folder and not much of anyplace else. So I
guessed that the offending file(s) that were getting Access Denied were
somewhere in that branch. A little research revealed that this folder is a
useless leftover remnant from an in-place upgrade from the Vista Business my
laptop was shipped with to Vista Ultimate. Deleting that folder removed
whatever it was (who knows? apparently no easy way to find out) that stopped
Vista Backup from working on "Documents".

'vista backup what were they thinking?'
 
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