Cannot schedule backups

I have the new Paragon Drive Backup 10.0 Professional and having trouble trying to run a scheduled backup. When the scheduled backup time arrives, a command prompt window opens with "taskeng.exe" as the title and nothing else happens. The backup does not run. Am I doing something wrong? Please help.

Also the second problem is I cannot unmount an archive. I get the message that "the drive is in use and cannot be stopped. Try again later". I am not accessing the mounted drive. This goes on for the rest of the day. The only way to unmount is to re-boot the computer, but there must be an easier way.

Thanks for your help.

John

 

Hi John,

You could type services.msc in start search - click it when it pops up - scroll down to Task Scheduler and see if it is running.

If not, rt click it, select Properties for details - It depends on the services Remote Procedure call and Windows Event log running too.

Also, Type: msconfig in start search - click it when it pops up - under services tab - make sure Task Scheduler is ticked.

If not, tick it , Apply, OK and restart.



Hope it helps.

 

Thanks for the reply.

I have checked both services.msc and msconfig and Windows Task Scheduler is running in both. Windows Event Log is also running and set to "automatic".

Have also tried creating a simple scheduled task in Task Scheduler and it runs fine so it appears the problem is not with Task Scheduler.

Do you know what "taskeng.exe" is supposed to do? As I said, it opens a command prompt window at the scheduled time but does not run or do anything.

Also, do you how to manually run a script without having to use the scheduler? This might tell us whether it is the scheduler or something else.

John

 

Here's a run down on what it's for:

http://what-process.com/process-info.aspx?p=taskeng.exe

Not sure why Paragon isn't making it work as expected.

I will have to try setting up a scheduled task and see what's going on.

 

Well, this is what I have discovered: I uninstalled Paragon Drive Backup 10.0 Professional and reinstalled ver. 9.0. Now I can schedule a backup! Works fine. Went back and reinstalled ver. 10.0. Same problem, can't run a scheduled backup. The interesting thing is that ver. 9.0 apparently doesn't use taskeng.exe. It doesn't appear at all in a command prompt window. My only conclusion is that ver. 10.0 has serious problems and should be withdrawn immediately. I wonder if Paragon knows about the scheduler problems in ver. 10.0?? I am about to abandom Paragon and go to Acronis True Image, which seems to be a much more stable product. At least you can schedule backups in Acronis. What is your opinion? Incidently, I reported the problem to Paragon Support several days ago but never got an answer or acknowledgment. Thanks again for your help.

John

 

It is very odd they haven't got back to you. Is that a trial version you were running?

One of the best things about Paragon is the incredibly good support.

They have a lot of new products on the go just now - so they are busy - it is also the weekend, of course - I expect you will get a response tomorrow or the next day.

Also, I am sure one of the Paragon team that comes to this site will be helpful.

I will see If my DB10 server runs a scheduled task ok.

I know System Backup 2010 works fine - haven't tried it on DB10 yet.


Will post back the result soon.

 

Hi ,

I just ran a scheduled backup using DB10 Server.

The command window opened for a second - then the scheduled backup ran perfectly.

Seems to be an issue with your system and DB10.

You are right, I don't recall seeing the command window pop up on DB9 so DB10 seems to be doing something different - works fine for me.

I am on 7x64.

 

I have the paid version of DB 10, not a trial. I wonder if DB 10 server uses the same backup technique as DB 10? All I can say is Windows Task Scheduler seems to work fine when used alone. I have tried DB 10 on three different computers, all running Vista SP2 and working normally. None of them will run a scheduled backup. I suspect that DB 9 does not use Windows Task Scheduler but uses its own scheduler and that is the reason it works. Maybe Windows 7 will fix the problem. I will have it installed in about a week so we shall see. Meanwhile, guess we will have to wait for Paragon Support to show up, hopefully soon. Another advantage of DB 9: You can run a script manually. In DB 10 you have to schedule it to run it. Let me know if you come up with any more ideas to try. Thanks.

John

 

FWIW, DB10 Pro scheduled taks are running fine with my Win7 x64. Doesn't help you much, I know. It may be relevant that I am using the Run As... to specify a user and password, even though I run it out of the same account I'm usually logged in as.

As I recall, when I upgraded to DB10, it had my DB9 scripts in the scheduler, but they would just fail, with no log, nothing, just a status of 'failed' in the scheduler window. I deleted them, and re-added them using the Run As and specifying the password, and they are running fine. Maybe a clue?

Good luck.

 

Okay, the account and password was a red herring. Sorry about that. I loaded up a Vista SP2 VM and installed DB10Pro to it. I used the wizard to create a quick file backup script. No 'Run now' as you noted elsewhere.

If I schedule the script to run in a couple of minutes, and close DB10, it pops up a command prompt, then the backup status window comes up, and the task runs. The command prompt window goes away when the backup status window shows up.

If I schedule the script to run in a couple of minutes, and DON'T close DB10, it pops up a command prompt, then an error windows pops up about the backup engine being in use. And pretty much sits there.

Is that any help?

Edit: I just tried this with DB9Pro, and the scheduled script runs fine if DB9Pro is open. I guess that's why the 'Run now' button is gone

 

Hi

I think you have solved my problem! Apparently the whole secret in DB10 is that you must exit the program after scheduling the backup or the backup will not run. Its strange that in DB9 the schedule will run with DB9 open. I really don't understand the logic behind this. Hopefully, the developers will get this mess straightened out in the next build and the main emphasis should be to BRING BACK the "Run Now" button. Anyway, thanks much for your help. You have solved the problem that Paragon Support had no idea how to solve. Maybe you should work for them .

John

 

Hi John,

Glad you got it working.

Never occurred to me that you would still have the program open when the scheduled backup started.

I guess Winds is right about the reason for no Run Now option.

 

The only reason I thought of that is because one of the (many) other backup utilities I use has that exact same issue. The key difference is that the reason I know the other utility has it, is that every time you schedule a task, it pops up a warning that the task won't run if the application is open. Hint, hint...

 

LOL.

Well spotted , though.

Does the sector backup seem quicker to you?

 

In terms of speed, I'm not a good person to answer that. I've only been running Paragon stuff for day-to-day backups for this past couple of weeks while I waited for my normal backup utility to release a Win7 compatible version (this morning!).

From what little I can gather from the logs, it certainly doesn't seem any faster, but I'm eyeballing end times against archive file sizes.

 

What is your "normal" backup utility? I'm not entirely happy with Paragon and may be looking for an alternative

 

I use Paragon stuff for drive imaging, especially using the recovery CD's to create the images and rebuild systems. One shot stuff. It's very good at that, and very good at recovering systems. And from my perspective, I bought the Virtualization Manager 2009 for a good price and they threw in Partition Manager 10 Personal for free. Virtualization Manager is my most commonly used Paragon product at this point. Paragon does a good job of P2V, P2P, V2V, etc. with their ability to get drivers into the restoration.

For day in, day out, week in, week out, year in, year out, daily backups, I use NovaBackup from NovaStor. My main complaint with it is that it doesn't have offline disk imaging, partitioning, repairing, etc. They did recently add a recovery CD that can do a restore, and looks an awful lot like Paragon's Linux CD's. I generally run a 4 week cycle, with full backups on the first day, and incrementals on the next 27 days. Then start it over again with a full. I'll keep 18-24 months of the full's around, and 2-3 months of the daily partials. I entrusted my wife's system to NovaBackup when she was writing her dissertation, and sure enough, she had a disk fail. Recovery worked fine.

Watching Paragon is kind of interesting. They know where some of the holes are, and System Backup 2010 has some improvements in notification, etc. But until they obfuscate the scripts so that they have to actually implement usable methods for adding a new disk to your nightly backup run, adding a new directory to your nightly run, removing a disk from your nightly run, figuring out three months later what you actually have in your nightly backup run, telling the user that a run failed, etc., their higher end products are going to be viewed, correctly, as one shot imaging packages with some backup features bolted on the side.

In my mind there are three classes of product in this space, imaging software (Ghost, Acronis, Paragon), sync software (SyncBackSE, SyncToy), and backup software (BackupExec, NovaBackup). All of them cross over into the other spaces to varying degrees, but the original space seems to color the feature set for a long time. The true backup utilities seem to have moved to the enterprise, there aren't many left in the home user world. There is no standalone workstation version of BackUpExec anymore, for example.

 

That's a lot of good information and it looks like you are top of the imaging/backup world. I will refer to it when I need some background info. I have been using Acronis to routinely image my drives but occassionally it has let me down. Once when a drive failed I tried to restore it by booting from the restore disk. I got the dreaded message that the image file was corrupt and could not be restored. I haven't trusted Acronis since. That is why I always verify the backup after it completes. Ideally, this should be done automatically as part of the backup routine and Acronis will do that. So I use Paragon as a backup for the backup, so in an emergency hopefully one of them will work. Paragon seems to be fairly reliable if you can just figure out how to use it.

John

 

Hi John ,

DB has always been totally reliable for me - worked on every o/s I threw at it - thru all the betas of 7 - no problems.

I can't say the same for all the other backup apps. I used.

 

I have some Acronis products and just don't trust them anymore. Can't pin down why, I just don't.

On an amusing note, I'm setting up the DR image backup in NovaBackup, and it's the Paragon Drive backup wizard. Really. Even to the gold cylinder in the artwork on the left side and the screwy date-time archive names. Very curious. I wonder what's going on. The file based backup stuff is still the same as it has been in NovaBackup for a while, so it's just the DR image stuff.

Curiouser and curiouser.

 

That is strange. There must be a working relationship between NovBackup and Paragon (or maybe NB is owned by Paragon). Never used NovaBackup but think I just might give it a try. Sounds like it has worked well for you.

John

 

I'm wondering if Paragon got the file based improvements from NovaStor, and NovaStor got the DR improvements from Paragon. Would kind of make sense. Still a bit odd to see.

 

Yes. that does make sense. Not to change the subject but I understand Windows 7 will have a drive imaging utility. Wonder if it will just be a clone of a 3rd party product or an entirely new product. Might be good to use as a backup to your regular drive imaging product. You can't beat the price if you have W7. I am anxious to see what it looks like. Do you have any info on it?

John

 

Yes, I am in 7 now.

It is very similar to the Vista one. It is included in 7 Home Premium - the Vista one was only in the higher versions.

There are two functions - file and folder backup.

System Image. I had a quick look at that. It forces you to backup Boot and System partitions - you can add others if you like.

It is not exactly quick - very little compression. On the plus side, it saves as a .vhd image - you can mount it by using Attach vhd in Disk Managament.

The Vista one was notoriously unreliable - there are quite a few reports of problems with the 7 version on the various 7 forums already. That is likely a small percentage and it probably works most of the time. Doesn't fill me with confidence, though.

 

Have you used it and has it worked well? Easy to use? Reliable? I have Vista Home Premium now so never used it but will upgrade to W7. Should get it in a few days from Newegg. Hope the upgrade goes well.

John