Scheduled tasks work only randomly...anyone else?

Hi folks. I have a backup job scheduled for every night at 2am but it only runs when it wants to apparently. It has only run once out of the last 4 nights since I have set it. The service is running fine and I have no problems with anything in my event viewer logs. Does anyone else have this problem or know what to do? Thanks.

 

Some more details might help.
I had the same problem with Version 11. The first scheduled backup ran on day one. On day two it failed to run. That was enough for me. I reverted to Version 10 which follows its daily backup schedules with no problems at all.

Xpilot

 

Good to know I'm not the only one. I will go back to 10 I guess. Are you running Vista?

 

No XP SP2.

 

Exactly the same problem here -- on two machines. At first I thought it was machine dependent because it would only be flaky on one machine but now the other just won't backup on some days.

 

Did you note whether any of the ATI services was no longer running or if any errors showed up in the ATI log?

 

would the power scheme matter in cases like this... i mean if your computer is set up to turn off hard disks after 2 hours... would this impact the scheduled overnight tasks?

Not sure cause I never turn off my hard disks.... my schedule is like this and acronis always runs-- Acronis TI 10 for me:

every night
12:00 windows update
12:30 avg update
01:00 avg scan
02:00 tune up system optimize
02:15 perfect disk defrag
03:30 acronis backup

 

I also never have had any problem with Version 10 scheduled backups. It is with version 11 that I and others are having difficulties.

The tile of this thread should reflect that.

Xpilot

 

If your computer shuts down the Harddisks or goes into standby, then the ATI scheduler can start a task until the pc is running again.

 

Just installed TI 11 and my scheduled tasks do not run at all, other than the one I have set to run at user logon. Tech support was no help, other than emails back and forth, asking for the same info. Reverted back to TI 10 and schedules work fine.

 

Hello all,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup software

Could you please do the following?

- Download and run schedmgr.exe application;

- Issue the following commands:

service stop
service uninstall

- Close schedmgr;

- Replace schedhlp.exe and schedul2.exe files in the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Acronis\Schedule2 folder with the files from this ZIP archive.

- Run schedmgr application once again;

- Issue the following commands:

service install
service start

- Close schedmgr;

If the problem still persists then please do the following:

- Open the command prompt (Start -> Run -> cmd);

- Run the following command in the folder the schedmgr.exe file was saved to:

schedmgr get report > schedreport.txt

- Collect schedreport.txt;

- Run Acronis Schedule Manager program (schedmgr.exe) once more;

- Issue the following command:

set logflags support

- Schedule backup creation once again;

- Wait until the scheduled backup will fail;

- Collect the log file schedul2.log that is placed in the \Program Files\Common
Files\Acronis\Schedule2 folder;

Please also create Windows System Information as it is described in Acronis Help Post. Then submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with a solution.

Thank you.

--
Michael Levchenko

 

I'm also having this exact same issue (on XP64).

Support has done an ok job, but lately have been giving me a bit of a run-around (claiming "issue resolved" instantly, if I ever mention it has run even once successfully - there seems to be a great difficulty of grasping the concept 'random failure/success'; I've had to explain this 2 times already ), so I'm posting here also to confirm there are more than one or two users with this issue, and also referenced this thread in my SR.

If you want to check, SR number is "Acronis #1205879".

 

Here's a tip for when you are dealing with Tech Support. Never start a message saying that something works *but* or saying it works when I do such and such but not when I do this and that.

There's a tendency for Tech Support to not get past the first positive info.

Alwasy start by saying what it doesn't do. You can qualify that later in you message, but start out with ATI won't . . .

I don't know why Tech is like this -- just rushed I guess.

 

I *know*. And that's what I've done - that's why it started out ok, but deteriorated once we got into serious troubleshooting and I actually have to tell exactly what is happening and when (and they can see the same from the logs I've sent). And I don't think that it is helping the confusion much, that every other stage is handled by different support personnel.

Another frustrating part usually is, that support makes you "jump through hoops" (the basic troubleshooting, which you already did) just to make sure (not so much this time).

Also, when things get _really_ technical and over the support's head (extreme case example, when I've been able to show them actual code which is failing and why - not the case here though) they still do a good job of isolating the developers from customer's reach (but that *is* their job, after all ).

Still ok - at least these guys haven't yet determined it must be an user error and leave it as-is and recommended to re-install windows.

(Edit: still, two thumbs up to anyone who has the patience to work in support - I've had to do it sometimes (as a developer) and it can be quite frustrating/tiresome)

 

Ok, support has finally given up on this (at least on my case) and suggested to schedule ATI start before daily defrag schedule (occured to me too, as the schedule seems to run ok if ATI is running when the scheduled task is supposed to launch).

Of course, that is not a real fix, so lets hope the issue can be identified and fixed in the future (I of course offered to help debug this if they can't replicate this issue on their platforms - if they're going to address this issue, they can contact me if needed).

For the record, since the start of the month the scheduled daily backup has failed to start on 4 days and succeeded 4 days, so 50-50 chance of working so far (no clear pattern has emerged yet on which days this works and when not - need more data).

 

Whoops. I meant ATI scheduler canNOT wake a PC to run tasks.