NTBackup Won't Start 1

[HKNinja]

I've scheduled my W2k Adv. Server to do Incremental backup every night at 12am. The scheduling looks fine; however, the backup wouldn't start with or without me logging in. Any clue?

-HKNinja

 

[ReddLefty]

I often found that you had to re-enter the password to the username/password used in the schedualed task.



"In space, nobody can hear you click..."

 

[HKNinja]

Hi ReddLefty,

What do you mean by that? I tried to leave the server on logged in as administrator, and even with NTBackup actively running, it just won't start itself. I checked last night at 12:17am and it was not doing anything. I ended up running it manually.

 

[ReddLefty]

NTBackup uses the Scheduled Tasks to run it's jobs. It basically creates the task for you. In your Control Panel, open your Scheduled Tasks and see if your backup job is listed. You can then edit it. This applies if you have Internet Explorer v6.x installed only, since they changed the scheduler in that update. Also, make sure your Task Scheduler service is running too. Other than that, I'm clueless...



"In space, nobody can hear you click..."

 

[gwu]

check the ntbackup log files at:

C:/Documents and Settings/Administrator(or whatever the username is)/Local Settings/Application Data/Microsoft/Windows NT/NTBackup/data/

 

[HKNinja]

Hi guys,

I just double checked and the Task Scheduler is running and no error in the NTBackup Reports (the same way as going to check them in the path gwu listed above.) No error was found. The task simply not executed although it's listed in the scheduled task. I tried deleted the task and recreated it, still doesn't work. I can't run the backup manually forever. :-/ I'm clueless too, ReddLefty.

 

[ReddLefty]

Well.. there is the reason I don't use it.. hehe. It's not known to be a very reliable company backup solution. Maybe just a simple reboot or reinstallation of Internet Explorer 6.1 or/and SP4 might whip it back into shape... I honestly don't know.



"In space, nobody can hear you click..."

 

[HKNinja]

Well, the good thing is it's free and and I need is simple backup. It serves the purpose and I had used it to restore files and it works perfectly. The only problem is the scheduling right now... :-/

 

[ReddLefty]

Are you sure the Application log doesn't have an entry either?



"In space, nobody can hear you click..."

 

[HKNinja]

Nope. No sign of any attempt to execute the backup...

 

[gwu]

did you create the ntbackup script, manually or using the ntbackup interface? If you did it using the ntbackup interface try creating your own test.bat file with the ntbackup command line argument:

ntbackup backup c:\folder_to_backup /j "My Backup" /f "D:\file_to_backup_to.bkf"

then create a new "scheduled task" to execute test.bat file and see if this works.

Are you using a tape back up or just plain-old disk backup?

 

[trusted]

HKNinja

qwu is right on the money with the solution. Just lookup the command option for ntbackup and you'll be able to do anything that you'll need to.

Here is an example of the .bkf file that we use on one of our servers.

C:C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\ /Exclude
D:H:G:I:R:SystemState

After you have created the .bat file you can use Task Scheduler to run it or the AT command.

 

[HKNinja]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the replies. I'm backing up the server to another server's hard drive over the network. The backup seems to kick in now after a number of tries. I didn't do anything different than before but it just started to work. The AT command looks good. It's a bit complicated (reading from the book.) I'm not quite sure what Trusted is talking about, but thanks anyway. I think I'll just AT command from now on instead of the GUI for backup (once I get to master the AT command.) I'll see how tonight's backup goes. I hope it runs correctly without user logged on (I left the admin logged on last night and it ran.)

- HKNinja
A+, MCP

 

[kmcferrin]

Scheduler and NTBackup are a pain. I was stuck using that solution for a few weeks at a startup until I was able to convince the folks above me that we needed a proper enterprise backup solution. We also had problems convincing the backup to run at scheduled times.

Veritas is somewhat pricey, but it works very well.