MS Backup Program

[Bob]

Hi there, I am running Windows XP Home and have the backup program loaded
from the CD. I try to run the program and would like to have it backup the
system every night. I have tried numerous times to use the backup wizard to
do this and each time I am asked for the user name and password. I have
never used a user name or password in the past but added a password to the
string of letters and numbers they gave as a user name and seemed to get
through it. However, everytime it should run I have a message on the
scheduled tasks that says, "could not start." I would apprecate some help in
learning what I am doing wrong. Thanks for your time and knowledge. Bob

 

[sgopus]

Take a look in event viewer for the error and report back here what it said.

 

[Bob]

sgopus, thanks for the quick response. The event viewer shows the type as
error; Source as ntbackup; Category as none; Event as B001; User as N/A and
Computer as owner. There were no error messages on the scheduled backups as
they never began but the backups that I start manually show that they were
ended as I had stopped them myself. I hope this helps or is what you are
asking for.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Hi there, I am running Windows XP Home and have the backup program loaded
from the CD. I try to run the program and would like to have it backup
the
system every night. I have tried numerous times to use the backup wizard
to
do this and each time I am asked for the user name and password. I have
never used a user name or password in the past but added a password to the
string of letters and numbers they gave as a user name and seemed to get
through it. However, everytime it should run I have a message on the
scheduled tasks that says, "could not start." I would apprecate some help
in
learning what I am doing wrong. Thanks for your time and knowledge. Bob

By default, if you attempt to run a scheduled task on a local user account
that has no password, it will silently fail. This is by design, as a
security precaution, and is not limited to Backup.

It's easy to get past this. Simply add a password to your user account,
and tell the scheduler what it is. It is possible to turn off the default
behaviour, but it's not prudent from a security standpoint.

Also, on XP Home ntbackup has some very annoying limitations; it may well
appear to you that you can do a complete system backup, but you won't
realize that you can't until it fails partway through. And there is no way
around that other than using a less feature-poor backup system. There
are many, and many people rely on imaging programs like Acronis TrueImage.

HTH
-pk

 

[Bob]

Patrick, thanks for the information. I'll give that a try and see how I do.
When I was checking out the FAQs I saw that many folks recommended Acronis
TrueImage. I had purchased Retrospect 7.5 but when I took my CPU in for a
problem, the computer repairman said that Retrospect 7.5 had to many whistles
and bells for a home computer. He recommended the ntbackup as simple to use
and great for my needs. Thanks again.

 

[Bob]

Patrick, I did as you suggested and added a password to my user account. The
first try after that did not work but then I realized I had not restarted my
computer after adding the password. I restarted the computer and ntbackup
started like a charm. I really do appreciate your time to share your
knowledge with others. I would also like to thank sgopus for their time as
well. Have a great week, Bob