No task progress in Vista

Hello,

I noticed that in Vista, whenever I run an unscheduled task (this probably affects scheduled tasks too, just never tried) the Time remaining info is never displayed, and the progress bar remain at zero, however, the job executes just fine. The scheduler in the task bar shows the correct percentage-done for the task when I hover over it, and the archive validates later just fine (again with no progress bar/status).

Also, the "Shutdown after task completes" checkbox is greyed out, as if I don't have permission to shut down (and yes I answered yes/continue to the UAC pop-up whenever it comes up).

I'm using build 9646 (existed in 9615 too) and Vista Home Premium edition. I tried re-installing, no help.

Anyone else experience this before?

Regards,

 

Works OK for me and it is something that is reported as fixed in latest 2009 build.

 

What is reported as fixed in the latest 2009 build, 9646, is "Estimated backup time values are now calculated correctly after minimizing the progress window."

This is not the same issue at all (unless you're refering to an unofficial fix not listed in the release notes). I am familiar with this issue as well, exhibited on my XP system (and I did notice this fix in 9646), but my Vista system displays absolutely no update in the task progress pop-up, even without minimizing the task at all.

 

All I can report is that mine does. However, the times are not accurate and haven't been on the previous build either. What happens with mine is that the top progress bar makes it way to the end whilst the bottom one shows only 50% completed and usually around 22 minutes remaining. At this point the backup job finishes and I get the completed logo. So a 44 minute backup is in effect a 20 minute backup.

 

Faust,

As I said already, this is COMPLETELY unrelated to my question, but I can explain your problem. It's actually not a bug; unintelligent design perhaps, but not a bug.

This behavior is due to how TI accounts for auto-consolidation, which I'm sure your task includes. Even if no consolidation criteria is met and the operation is not performed, I guess the TI developers couldn't figure out an intelligent way to calculate whether consolidation will be necessary or not (until the backup is complete), so they always assume it will be necessary (and probably use a proportional estimate such as ETA for consolidation == ETA for backup).

There are 3 categories of consolidation:

1. Number of backup versions exceed X - this one is actually very easy to deal with, not sure why they haven't thought of this already, because you know from the beginning how many versions you'll end up with, so you know right off the bat whether consolidation will be needed or not.
2. Storage period of old backups exceed X days - also very easy to handle, just check the date of the oldest backup when you begin the current backup
3. Size of archive exceeds X - this is the tricky one, which is probably why they went with the generic junk design. Because you can't predict the current backup's final size until you pass the threshold, you can't tell whether or not you'd have to consolidate.

So the first and second are very easy to handle (i.e. get an accurate ETA for consilidation before the task even begins) but I guess because they didn't have a scientific answer for the 3rd, they decidied to stick with a crappy estimate for all 3.

 

Hello Tuxy and Faust,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

Please do the following to resolve the issue:

1. Download Acronis Scheduler, which is a special utility to update the scheduler service from;
2. Extract the downloaded file and run install.bat. The utility will automatically update the service;
3. Reboot the machine;
4. Recreate the scheduled tasks or perform your manual backup from scratch

If the issue still persists, please let us investigate this issue and do the following:

1. Create a screen shot of zero progress bar

- Get to the window which you want to make a screen shot of;
- Hit the (Alt+)PrintScreen button on your keyboard;
- Run Paint usually available in Start\Programs\Accessories or another graphics application;
- Choose Paste command in Edit menu;
- Save the result picture in JPEG format being preferable.

2. Disable UAC and check if the issue with "Shutdown after task completes" persists.

Please do the following to disable UAC:
- Go Start > Run, issue "msconfig" without quotation-marks and press [Enter].
- In Tools select "Disable UAC"

If it does, please create Acronis Report and 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. To expedite the resolution we recommend you to use our Live Chat service after that. We will do our best to investigate the issue and provide you with a solution.

Thank you.
--
Alexander Nikolsky

 

Interesting.. I did a chat session with a support person last week and they had me try that update. It really messed up True Image 2009 for me. I ended up reinstalling True Image 2009 from scratch after uninstalling everything and am now fixed up.

I noticed the files in this update are dated 3/2008 and the KB article for this patch online mentions them being a fix for 11.0. The files that come with 2009 build 9646 are from 11/2008. Are you sure these are correct for 2009?

 

Hello mogulman,

Yes, Scheduler mechanism (and all files related to update) are compatible between Acronis True Image 11 Home and Acronis True Image Home 2009.

Thank you.
--
Alexander Nikolsky