B&R 10 needs excluse access to Volume C:

Hi,

I'm running B&R 10 Home Edition on a Windows XP SP3 PC, and have happily been doing so since its release. Now, whenever I try to create a new backup (whether differential or full), I get the message that B&R needs exclusive access to Volume C: and that it needs to restart the computer.

However, when the computer restarts & B&R runs, it comes up with an error message that states it cannot open or create a file (it doesn't say which or what file) and stops.

Other points are that trying to use VSS fails after three attempts (Windows VSM is running though). I have run CHKDSK and there don't seem to be any problems with the drive.

HELP!

 

Did you run chkdsk with the /r switch so it does a read-check of all the files and even unused sectors? If not, I would do so.

 

Yes, I've done that - the volume is "clean". I've also tried switching off System Restore.

The issue seems to be solely to do with the C: drive partition of my hard disk, I can do a full back up of the second partition (D without a problem.

 

It could be that some application or process has been installed/started that won't release its hold on C:.

Have you installed anything new since it last worked? Obviously, something has changed since it did work. May be a Windows update but my XP portable is up-to-date and still is OK but I may be at B&R11 on it.

Try shutting off any anti-virus program.

You might look in MSConfig and see what is there and IIRC, you can revert to MS-only stuff for loading at startup.

What happens if you try to make your backup by booting the recovery CD and using it?

 

Well, progress of a sort. I tried disabling as many services via msconfig as I thought safe and disactivating Norton, but still without success - intriguingly there was a message about access being denied & that I might need administrator privilege (which I do have). However, everything seemed to have been switched off as it should have been.

So the next step I tried was to use msconfig to configure a diagnostic startup. Once Windows had loaded, I restarted VSM and ran Paragon to produce a full back up of the C: drive. This time it didn't even try VSS, but said that to continue it needed to restart. When I restarted the machine, the backup ran successfully before Windows loaded. Hurray!

Now I need to track down what is blocking the backup in Windows. I suspect that this might take some time! I let you know how I get on, but in the mean time, thanks a lot for your help.